DAVINCI’S DEMONS

So last night I started watching DaVinci’s Demons, a British-American series which presents a highly fantastical representation of Leonardo Davinci’s early adult life as an artist, inventor, idealist and intellect and Florence under the Medici’s. The series is conceived and written by David S. Goyer.

Described as a historical fantasy, the series explores the untold story of DaVinci “inventing” the future at the age of 25, at a time in history when “thought and faith are controlled…as one man fights to set knowledge free.” The young DaVinci struggles with his inner darkness “tortured by a gift of superhuman genius. He is a heretic intent on exposing the lies of religion. An insurgent seeking to subvert an elitist society. A bastard son who yearns for legitimacy with his father.”

I was not expecting much with this show so I was pleasantly surprised at how good it is. It strikes the right balance of history and fantasy. DaVinci is presented as a sort of Florentine Sherlock, his unique vision and insights highlighted by moments of slow-motion and animated DaVinci drawings.

In fact, if you’re waiting impatiently for the new season of SHERLOCK in October (and, let’s face it, who isn’t?) then this just might be the series to tide you over. Visually it is very lush with beautiful scenery and costumes and, as this is Starz, there are enough expletives, boobs, bums and dicks on display to satisfy the GAME OF THRONES/SPARTACUS crowd. There is also enough action, sword fights, spurting blood, clever chases and explosions to satisfy attention deficit viewers.

Tom Riley does his best Benedict Cumberbatch/Johnny Lee Miller as Leonardo. He is difficult, a womanizer, a drunkard as well as a man of frenetic action and tortured genius. The rest of the cast is good and mostly British. DEEP SPACE NINE fans will recognize Julian Bashir — Alexander Siddig as Al-Rahim and SHERLOCK aficionados will recognize Irene Adler — Lara Pulver as Clarice Orsini.

I’m only two episodes in but I’m enjoying it enormously and I would recommend it based on the opening two. There are only eight episodes in the first season but it has been renewed for a second. It’s certainly worth a look.

 

…ARE YOU WARM, ARE YOU REAL, MONA LISA?

This is the Islesworth Mona Lisa.

For anyone with even a passing familiarity with DaVinci’s masterpiece it is obvious that this is not the portrait that currently hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris. For one, the woman is much younger than the iconic Mona Lisa of DaVinci. There are other differences as well. The canvas is wider and we can see more of the framing pillars behind the figure. The background is different.

The Isleworth Mona Lisa was discovered just before World War 1 by an art collector named Hugh Blaker in the home of a Somerset nobleman. Blaker bought the painting and took it to his studio in Isleworth, London, from which it takes its name.

Now, the appearance of a Mona Lisa is not that unusual. Many have painted copies of DaVinci’s portrait. It is one of the most reproduced images in the world, after all. But there is a twist.

Blaker knew that Leonardo had started to paint Mona Lisa in 1503, but “left it unfinished”. This is recounted by Leonardo’s early biographer Giorgio Vasari. However, a fully finished painting of a “certain Florentine lady” surfaces again in 1517, shortly before Leonardo’s death and in his private possession. The latter painting almost certainly is the same that now hangs in the Louvre.

So what happened to the earlier attempt? Well, Blaker figured that the Isleworth Mona Lisa was that earlier attempt. He and other supporters claimed it to be the unfinished Mona Lisa, made at least partially by Leonardo and originally handed over to its commissioner. That would mean that the Louvre Mona Lisa was a later version of the portrait made by Leonardo for his own use.

The Isleworth painting has changed hands a few times between then and now. It is currently owned by a Zurich group calling itself the Mona Lisa Foundation. They unveiled the painting recently and reiterated the claim that it is an earlier DaVinci version of the Mona Lisa portrait.

That claim, unsurprisingly, has provoked a number of reactions in the art world. Some have come forward to denounce the Isleworth painting as a forgery.

So what are we to make of this younger and prettier Mona Lisa? Is it an authentic Mona Lisa? Should it replace the portrait hanging in the Louvre? Wouldn’t that be an appropriate comment on the age in which we live? The older, mature face gets replaced by one younger and prettier. That would be a sad story.

But here’s a better story, and maybe a sadder one. Did Leonardo DaVinci fall in love with the young, pretty wife of Francesco del Giocondo when he was commissioned to paint her portrait? He would have been 51 in 1503 when Lisa Gherardini sat for him. She would have been 24 years old, a young wife, making a home with her wealthy cloth merchant husband, their second child newly born.

Was the old painter sentimental enough to fall in love with her lovely smile? The smile is certainly more evident in this earlier portrait. Did it haunt him through the years? Did young Lisa’s face stay in his mind, aging gracefully in DaVinci’s imagination until he was compelled to commit her likeness to canvas once more years later, older, sadder perhaps, with an enigmatic smile? Did he paint it from memory or did she sit for him again, one more time, years later — just for him this time?

Did he know he was painting his masterpiece?

The later portrait, the one in the Louvre, was called by DaVinci “La Giaconda”, which means “The Jocular One” A pun, perhaps? A play on the name Giocondo? Or was DaVinci obfuscating to hide the fact that he had the portrait of another man’s wife in his possession? Was it love that compelled Davinci to paint La Giaconda? Was it a great and unfulfilled love that immortalized a young Florentine woman to the point that she is now arguably one of the most recognized faces in history?

We will never know, of course. This is just a story. But it is an appealing idea, isn’t it? That it was love — not money, or vanity, or the lust for fame or power — but love that was responsible for the most famous painting in the world.