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Vanished Smile

Page 20

by R. A. Scotti


  129 FINANCIAL RECORDS SUGGEST: Charles Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind.

  131 IN HIS NOTES ON PAINTING: Leonardo on Painting.

  132 BY PURE COINCIDENCE: A Frenchman, probably the historian Jules Michelet, was the first to suggest the love affair. Michelet wrote that Mona Lisa was so seductive, even Leonardo—“the complete man, balanced, all-powerful in all things, who summarized all the past, anticipated the future … was taken in by the snare. …” Jules Verne, as a young man and something of a na'if, composed a play about the illusory romance, and the Italian Romantic poet Enrico Panzacchi celebrated it in verse. He imagined Lisa's husband refusing to accept the portrait when he saw the smile on his wife's lips. Suspecting the worst, he returned the painting to the artist. We don't know what he did with his wife.

  Messer Francesco suo sposo e signore

  Tomato vide Vopra e il mutamento

  Fece col capo un segno di scontento

  E il ritatto rimase as suo pittore.

  Signore Francesco her husband and lord

  Came back to view the work and seeing the change in his wife

  Shook his head in disgust

  And returned the painting to the painter.

  132 TODAY WE KNOW: Mohen et al., Mona Lisa: Inside the Painting.

  135 ACCORDING TO CELLINI: Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography.

  139 IN A VALIANT EFFORT AT RECONCILIATION: Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci.

  139 LISA DEL GIOCONDO: Giuseppe Pallanti, Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo's Model.

  140 IN LEONARDO'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT: Janice Shell and Grazioso Sironi, “Salai and Leonardo's Legacy,” The Burlington Magazine 133, no. 1055 (February 1991).

  145 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: André Felibien, Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modemes. Paris: Societe d'edition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1987.

  146 TO FLAUNT THE SUPERIORITY: The structural condition of the Louvre was so bad that it closed again in 1796. It reopened fully on July 14, 1801.

  151 A BRITISH GALAHAD: Walter Pater, Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry.

  153 INVESTIGATORS HAD CHASED TIPS: Rene Casselari, Dramas of

  French Crime.

  A LETTER FROM LEONARDO

  166 ALPHONSE BERTILLON WAS DYING: When he died, Bertillon was working on a plan to make future art fraud impossible. A few days before his death, he said: “Every artist will, in the future, place his thumb or any finger he may desire on the moist pigment together with his signature. He will make a duplicate of the impression on the usually prepared paper, which will be deposited with the École des Beaux-Arts. This paper will be photographed and the copies made kept on hand for distribution among collectors and dealers as the occasion may demand.” Quoted in The New York Times, Feb. 13, 1914.

  183 HENRY DUVEEN HAD TOLD A VERY DIFFERENT STORY: Duveen, Art Treasures and Intrigue.

  THE STING

  191 NEW YEAR'S 1914: Karl Decker, “How and Why the Mona Lisa Was Stolen,” Saturday Evening Post, June 25, 1932.

  199 FORGING IS ITSELF A FINE ART: Frank Arnau, The Art of the Faker.

  A PERFECT STORY

  217 THE NOVELIST JAMES M. CAIN: The papers of James M. Cain are in the Library of Congress.

  THE PRISONER

  221 SINCE THEN MANY ARTISTS: Roy McMullen, Mona Lisa: Picture and Myth; see also the Web site, www.monalisamania.com.

  225 SHE HAS MOVED FROM HER OLD SPOT: McMullen, Mona Lisa.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  PERIODICALS

  Architectural Review, May 1910

  Art Bulletin, September 1941, December 1977, June 1985

  Art News, September 1991

  Atlantic Monthly, March 1929

  Art and Antiques, January 1987 digital self-portrait

  Art News, 1907-1912, 1991, 1992

  Bookman, November 1911

  Burlington Magazine, September 1947, March 1973

  Gazette des Beaux Arts, November 1989, March 1993

  Journal of Forensic Sciences, November 1992

  Journal of the History of Ideas, April 1940, April 1956

  Modern Language Review V, 74, 1979

  Saturday Evening Post, June 1932

  Smithsonian, May 1999

  Urban History, August 2006

  NEWSPAPERS

  Chicago Tribune

  Le Figaro

  Le Matin

  L'lllustration

  London Times

  Paris-Journal

  Le Temps

  Los Angeles Times

  New York Journal

  Paris Herald

  The New York Times

  The Washington Post

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  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  R. A. Scotti is the author of four novels and three works of non-fiction: Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal—Building St. Peter's; Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938; and Cradle Song. She lives in New York City.

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2009 by R. A. Scotti

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by

  Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Anvil Press Poetry for permission

  to reprint an excerpt from “The Little Car” from Guillaume

  Apollinaire: Selected Poems, translated by Oliver Bernard

  (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2004). Reprinted by

  permission of Anvil Press Poetry.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Milton Esterow for permission

  to use translations of French newspapers from his book,

  The Art Stealers.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks

  of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Scotti, R. A.

  Vanished smile: the mysterious theft of Mona Lisa /

  RA. Scotti—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-27154-9

  i. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519. Mona Lisa.

  2. Art thefts—France—Paris. I. Title.

  ND623 L5A7 2009 759.5—dc22 2OO8047851

  v3.0

 

 

 


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