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Researchers find a rare compound, plumbonacrite, in first layer of Mona Lisa
- dieselgate 3y agoThis is interesting, wasn't expecting "lead paint!" to be the punchline here
- gumby 3y agoWe shouldn’t be surprised: lead is toxic and Leonardo is now dead. (This is a very old Cyc (AI) joke)
- paxys 3y agoThe takeaway should really be that there is nothing objectively extraordinary about the Mona Lisa. It is mostly famous for being famous.
- deely3 3y agoWait, as opposed to famous.. for not being famous?
- edmundsauto 3y agoAs opposed to being famous because it is a revolution in style or the material is historic or because it’s inherently interesting or moving.
- SamFold 3y agoHow can you possibly argue the Mona Lisa isn’t inherently interesting or moving? It wouldn’t be the most famous painting in the world if it wasn’t interesting or moving. And no, it’s not because it was stolen. Most people don’t even know it was stolen. I loved the painting and it moved me from the moment I saw it as a child.
- iopq 3y ago> It wouldn’t be the most famous painting in the world if it wasn’t interesting or moving. The most popular book in the world is the Bible and I never found it very interesting
- crtified 3y agoThe overall human majority probably falls upon the side of (people who don't find the Christian Bible very interesting), as opposed to those who worship it. After all, Wikipedia tells us there are only about 2.4 billion total Christians on the planet. Therefore, you fall in line with the dominant human viewpoint, the popular opinion. I don't know what my point is, apart from a friendly irony that in eschewing (the) popularity (of the Bible), you're actually doing the popular thing.
- iopq 3y agoI bet you the majority of the population doesn't think Mona Lisa is anything amazing and is just a famous painting. They just don't come out of the woodwork to tell you that
- edmundsauto 3y agoI do find it interesting that it is so famous, but I think it’s probably due more to a confluence of coincidental events than anything inherent to the painting. Rerun the universe simulator 1M times (adding a hard requirement that this paining gets painted every time) and I’d bet this level of popularity is an outlier. I just don’t think popularity means much outside of a lot of people knowing about it in some vaguely positive light. Sometimes things are popular because they are incredible (the Beatles), sometimes they are popular just because of randomness or situational context (most pre-20th century American literature)
- ketralnis 3y agoIt was fairly unknown outside of art buff circles until it was stolen in 1911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa#Refuge,_theft,_and_vandalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa#Refuge,_theft,_and_v... It's not a mysteriously unknown technique, or of particular historical importance, or the only painting by da Vinci. It become famous mostly because of the theft incident and once you're famous the famousness tends to feed itself because people do things like X-ray it which adds to the mystique. It was owned by some famous people including Napoleon and it's spent a lot of time in art museums being shown to the public, but there's no secret message on the back or alien decoder ring or demascus steel/roman concrete "how'd he do it?!" mystery.
- adasdasdas 3y agoA lot of paintings get stolen though, what makes this case special
- ketralnis 3y agoShrug, good question. I guess that's what it means to be famous for being famous.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tasty_freeze 3y agoBack in the 70s, the Pet Rock became all the rage. Considering all the novelty gag gifts that come and go, why did that one catch fire? Some memes catch on while most don't for inscrutable reasons. Most likely there was some notable cultural reference to it and its nudge into cultural relevance further fed to more gains.
- SamFold 3y agoIf it didn’t have some other appeal the theft would never have led to the worldwide appeal of the painting. The theft may have kickstarted the recognition but this painting has something special about it, the woman, her expression, there’s a mystery about it. I loved the painting before I ever knew it was stolen. I think it’s fair to say there is something about this painting that isn’t in many other works or most other works, and it’s a human and psychological quality more than some special painting technique.
- tiltowait 3y agoAs opposed to being famous based on merit. The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world despite not being all that remarkable, at least by pure aesthetics.
- SamFold 3y agoIt wouldn’t be as famous as it is if it didn’t have something remarkable about it. Art is about creating emotion in people and whether you think it has good “aesthetics” or not, the Mona Lisa captures people’s imaginations almost more than any other painting in the world. For me there is a mystery and secret in the Mona Lisa which doesn’t exist in other paintings that might show great “skill” and in the end, art is about emotional impact, not what some critic thinks is “skillful”
- GuB-42 3y agoIt is probably a combination of many things. It is made by one of the famous and influential person in history. It is aesthetically pleasing, a bit mysterious yet accessible. The technique is interesting. And with the 1911 theft, it comes with an exciting story. Taken individually, none of these qualities are that remarkable, but it is the combination, and a bit of chance.
- lazide 3y agoIt probably got picked up and used as an example of ‘famous stolen art’ in a movie too, which skyrocketed it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- prox 3y agoSince people really don’t know why it is famous, it is because of the sfumato technique employed. This is the painting that employs it most successfully (not sure if it was his first with sfumato, but surely the most prolific) Leonardo is one of the first painters using the technique and who studied optics and wrote about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato I think the Romans knew about sfumato as well, so it fits in the renaissance thinking of the time.
- spdif899 3y agoI've always heard that it is famous because it was stolen, and had lots of drama and global news cycles surrounding its eventual return and display. This is the first time I've heard of Sfumato let alone seen someone suggest a niche technique is the reason people are aware of the painting.
- prox 3y agoWell I think the drama around it might have helped, but as someone who has done art history, I can’t remember the stolen part being mentioned. Leonardo seems to be very famous in his time and after, and he died under the patronage of the king of France. I highly recommend reading his notebooks, it gives a glimps of the mind of this genius. His observational skills were impressive. In a way he was a hacker if you take the expanded meaning of the word: always thinking up new things and inventions.
- dredmorbius 3y agoAnd at the time it was stolen, image reproduction techniques capable of displaying artwork in at least recognisable fidelity within mass-market publications were just being introduced. (The distribution of such images probably also reduced the effective value of the work-as-stolen as it would be more readily recognised if displayed publicly.) Attention returned repeatedly to the Mona Lisa through numerous subsequent events, e.g., Duchamp's reproduction with a beard and mustache added, in 1919. <https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-the-mona-lisa-so-famous https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-the-mona-lisa-so-fam...> <https://www.wikiart.org/en/marcel-duchamp/l-h-o-o-q-mona-lisa-with-moustache-1919 https://www.wikiart.org/en/marcel-duchamp/l-h-o-o-q-mona-lis...> Google's Ngram viewer suggests a further increase of references in print following 1980, though that might reflect a disproportionate presence of academic works within the scanned corpus: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Mona+Lisa&year_start=1819&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Mona+Lisa&year...>
- daniel-cussen 3y ago[dead]
- mk_stjames 3y agoIt's always interesting to see research like this and sit back and wonder about how and why certain things get studied. Like, this required some funding and time. And I'm someone who enjoys a lot of classical art, but I find it hard to care this much about an old painting... When I was in university studying materials science I remember a grad student friend vying to get time and funding to get to a certain syncrotron for X-ray diffraction studies of potential new solar cell substrates (diffused AL/amorphous silicon:H iirc..). I can't imagine the level of facepalming if he'd have been told the department had to bump that research because.... 'hey we need to look at properties of the paint from the Mona Lisa....'
- dieselgate 3y agoIndeed, I have a Mexican friend (I'm American) who when we met was a chemistry postdoc in CDMX. His entire focus (as a postdoc) is to examine chemical compositions of paintings and artwork (from pre-modern artifacts to Diego Rivera murals/frescos). Not sure where all the funding comes from but believe a lot of it is from the Mexican Gov for cultural and regional restoration efforts. A few years back him and a colleague traveled to San Francisco to analyze a multi-panel Rivera piece ("Pan American Unity" [1]) that was on display at (and owned) by City College San Francisco. The goal was to move the panels from CCSF to the SFMOMA [2] for display and their task was to make sure it could be moved properly to minimize damage. It was super cool to visit and see their workspace and tooling. For the mural itself - it's amazing and huge and recommend folks take a look if they can. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_Unity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_Unity [2]: https://riveramural.org/ https://riveramural.org/
- lazide 3y agoFunding for these kinds of things often comes from cultural restoration needs - and from forgery/debunking needs. Knowing the actual compositions and behaviors of the chemicals and materials used at different times can be absolutely critical for both.
- joewferrara 3y agoTo counter point, the Mona Lisa makes so much money from people going to see it, it’s not surprising that some money could be found to do this research. And the write up on the composition of the Mona Lisa paint would get exponentially many more readers than any real research your friend would be doing.
- jemmyw 3y agoDid he use paint and paint brushes?
- dylan604 3y agoThat'll be best shock is he was the best finger painter ever.
- PhasmaFelis 3y agoHe had amazingly feathery fingernails.
- idlewords 3y agoImagine the moral dilemma if they strike oil five layers down.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- m463 3y agoWell, it's oil paint, so I wouldn't be surprised.