Monna Vanna



A topless Mona Lisa  Mona Lisa is back in the news.

Are they ever going to leave the woman alone? Not that Leonardo could leave her alone, either. He started painting the lady in Florence and didn’t finish her for 16 years, taking her with him wherever he went. He even schlepped it to France when he worked for King Francis I. And he had it with him when he died. Clearly, he felt there was something to her, but I’m not seeing it. The background scenery holds more mystery. Now they’re saying there’s a nude Mona by Leonardo called “Monna Vanna.” It sure looks like her: same half-smile, same pose. She was found behind paneling of a wall in the private library of Cardinal Joseph Fesche, Napoleon’s ambassador to the Vatican. Hiding a picture of a naked woman behind your wall, Cardinal? Tsk, tsk. Wait, there’s more. Something new has been found in Mona Lisa’s eyes. Silvano Vinceti, president of Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage has announced that under magnification, her eyes carry messages in the form of letters. In one eye, he sees the letters LV. What, another Da Vinci code? Where’s Dan Brown when you need him?
Don’t you get the feeling that the National Committee for Cultural Heritage is working overtime by calling attention to Mona? I mean, how much MORE attention is necessary? She gets so many visitors (seven million a year) that guards at the Louvre went on strike in ’07 for higher wages owing to the stress of guarding her.  As for the hidden letters in her eyes. If you can’t see the letters without hi-tech magnification, how did Leonardo manage to paint them with his naked eye? By the way, Silvano Vinceti is the same guy who wants to exhume Leonardo’s body to see if Mona is a self-portrait in disguise.

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