An Ordinary Life Leads to the World's Most Famous Painting

In the late 1970s my parents had an opportunity to visit Europe a couple of times.  During one trip they toured the Louvre in Paris, France mainly to see what everyone else goes there to see – Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the world’s most famous painting.

When I asked my mother what she thought of it she said, “It wasn’t as big as I thought it should be since everyone makes such a big deal about it.”

Compared to other famous paintings and based on today’s standards it might be small.  Basing it on the standard of the day when someone commissioned a painting it WAS pretty big.

There has always been an aura of mystery surrounding the painting with the prime question being who in the world was Mona Lisa?

The mysteries just seemed to add to its popularity.

Today, art historians have identified the woman immortalized on canvas as Lisa del Giocondo, the third and much younger wife of a wealthy silk merchant.

Supposedly, Da Vinci was commissioned to paint Giocondo’s wife to celebrate the birth of a second son or moving to a new home.

Though the Giocondo family was wealthy the accounts I’ve read don’t paint them as fabulously wealthy.  Most accounts state Lisa Giocondo’s life was very ordinary – which is so ironic since the painting is so famous. 

Lisa Giocondo was finally indentified when a researcher noticed a margin note in some documents written in 1503 by Agostino Vespucci.  He made the margin note in a 1477 edition of Cicero’s Epostulae ad Familiares held at the Heidelberg University.  Vespucci was a chancellery official, clerk, and assistant to Machiavelli.

Da Vinci took a few years to finish the painting and didn’t do so until he had moved to France in 1519.  The king of France, Francois I, bought the painting and upon his death it belonged to the French Royal Family until the French Revolution.

Why wasn’t the painting delivered to the Giocondo family?  Was it because the painting was never finished?   Were they unhappy with it?  Did they refuse to pay?


In April, 2011 a group attempted to locate Lisa Giocondo’s remains at the convent where she is supposedly is buried.  By May, a skull and some bone fragments were found

This site advises that a battery of tests such as carbon-14 dating and a comparison of DNA with two of Giocondo’s children buried in Florence’s Santissma Annunziata church will be required to prove the skeleton belonged to Mona Lisa’s real-life model.

It would seem the more we discover the more we still have a mystery.

Beauford Delaney

I love the color in both of these paintings.  They are both from 1946.   The top painting is called Can Fire in the Park and the second is titled Jazz Quartet.   The artist for both is Beauford Delaney.   While both paintings have the same colorful style both represent different situations – one being the downtrodden and the other depicting the wonderful contribution Jazz has made to the American music scene.

Beauford Delaney was an American Modernist who hailed from the South but worked in New York and later Paris.   He studied art in Boston and was introduced to black activism through people like Butler Wilson a board member for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Delaney loved living in New York City among people from various ethnic backgrounds.   His subjects were the people he saw all around him in parks and cafes yet his work doesn’t depict a vision of life in the city.   It’s more than that.   Delaney’s work shows what it FELT like to live in the city.   While living in America’s greatest city Delaney worked as a bellhop and janitor.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum describes Can Fire in the Park as a disturbing contemporary vignette [which] conveys a legacy of deprivation linked not only to the depression years after 1929 but also to the longstanding disenfranchisement of black American portrayed as social outcasts.

Style portrays musical rhythms and bold color use “hovers between representation and abstraction”

The biography, Amazing Grace: A Life of Beaford Delaney written by David Leeming states he led a very compartmentalized life and was rather isolated.   He had friends but managed to keep much of his life private.   He lived in Greenwich Village and had many white friends yet he also fit in with Harlem because of his ethnicity.   Most certainly due to the times he kept his homosexuality secret.

Beauford Delaney moved to Paris in 1953 where his work finally evolved into abstract expressionism.

The Pilgrims in Art

It’s pretty easy to pick out a Pilgrim in art even though many of the images are not factual and tend to be romanticized.

The first image we have of the Pilgrims is an engraving by Samuel Hall.

Michel Felice Corne used the Hall engraving to create his painting, “The Landing of the Pilgrims seen below.



Notice the Pilgrims are not wearing what we usually think of.  Instead of the 1600s their clothing is more in line with the 1800s.

There is also a group of Native Americans greeting the Pilgrims.  This didn’t actually happen.    In fact, it was almost four months before there was an actual meet-up.

This is most certainly one example when the artwork does not portray actual history.

This particular article provides more information regarding the Pilgrims in art.

The Art of Vietnam

Doing a quick Google search I came upon the fantastic website, The Art of War…Vietnam as Seen Through the Artwork of Those Who Were There.

The art found there is very interesting…..

This work by Richard Russell Yohnka is haunting…..he states his work is  the depersonalized soldier, the soldier within who has suppressed the emotion of the community of war.

This work is titled Class of ’67 by Charlie Shobe

and this work is The Wound by Ned Broderick

Washington Crossing the Delaware

This painting is Washington Crossing the Delaware, of course.  Elementaryhistoryteacher over at History Is Elementary gives an excellent explanation of this painting......a painting that includes not one but two future U.S. Presidents.

Access her post here.

The National Archives and The American Revolution

The National Archives has a wonderful page set aside for links to all of their works from the American Revolution……a fantatic treasure trove to go through.

You can find the page here.

There you will find such things as

Von Steuben at Valley Forge by G.R. Hall (1858)

The Landing on the Jerseys by British forces by Davies (1776)

Peggy Shippen (Mrs. Benedict Arnold) by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Michele Felice Corne and the War of 1812

Corne is remembered for his maritime art especially scenes from the War of 1812.

Since there was no actual footage of war action during the 1800s our only graphic source are the many paintings that were created in the years following the events.   We have to be careful, however, because many “historic” paintings romanticize events instead of depicting them accurately.  

However, accuracy reigns in the four paintings Corne painted regarding the action between the USS Constitution and the HMS Guerriere on August 19, 1812.

The following four paintings now hang in the U.S. Naval Academy Museum.

The Approach

A frigate sighted by the USS Constitution was determined to be HMS Guerriere.   The words “Not The Little Belt” was painted on one of her topsails.

The Engagement

Guerriere opened fire upon entering range of Constitution, but the Americans managed to hold fire until the two warships were a mere 25 yards apart, at which point a full double-loaded broadside of grape and round shot was fired.

Collision

Over the course of the engagement, the ships collided, and at one point they rotated together counterclockwise while Constitution continued firing broadsides.  Guerriere’s bowsprit became entangled in Constitution’s rigging.   When the two ships pulled apart, the force of the extracting bowsprit sent shockwaves through Guerriere’s rigging.   Her formast soon collapsed and it took the mainmast down with it shortly.

Pulling Away

The result was Guerriere became a dismasted, unmanageable hulk.   A third of her crew were wounded or killed.   The British surrendered and the remaining crew transferred to the USS Constitution.

The Guerriere was not pulled to port and the Americans burned her.

Since many of the British shots rebounded harmlessly off Constitution’s hull she earned the nickname “Old Ironsides”.  

Once the USS Constitution and her crew returned to Boston around the end of August, 1812 the crew discovered the news of their victory had spread like wildfire, and they were hailed as heroes.