More than five centuries have passed since the “Mona Lisa” was created, but the statue still causes a stir. An art historian and geologist now wants to solve the mystery surrounding the landscape in Leonardo da Vinci’s work.
Geologist and Renaissance specialist Ann Pizzorusso believes she has found the background of the image in the northern Italian city of Lecco. “When I came to Lecco, I realized that the Mona Lisa was painted here,” she said of the small town on Lake Como, previously best known as the setting for Alessandro Manzoni’s masterpiece “The Betrothed.”
According to them, the arch bridge depicted in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting is the 14th-century Ponte Azzone Visconti, although previous theories had linked it to similar constructions in other Italian cities such as Arezzo and Bobbio.
“Geology was wrong on other hypotheses.”
Pizzorusso is not the first person to claim to have solved the mystery. “But the bridge wasn’t the most important aspect of the painting for me,” she said. ‘The geology was wrong in the other hypotheses.’ She now believes she has found the spot where the background was painted. “When you look at the Mona Lisa, you see this part of the Adda River and another lake behind it, perfectly depicted beneath these sawtooth mountains.”
Just a year ago, other experts in Rome gave a press conference where they identified the landscape in the background of the painting as the Romito Bridge at Laterina in the Tuscan province of Arezzo. The president of the Italian Committee for the Improvement of Historical Cultural and Environmental Heritage, historian Silvano Vinceti, also supports this statement. The expert dispute therefore still appears to be unresolved.
The photo hangs in the Louvre art museum in Paris
The “Mona Lisa” is a world-famous oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci from the heyday of the Italian Renaissance at the beginning of the 16th century. The original painting has been on display at the Louvre Art Museum in Paris since the late 18th century and is considered one of its most famous exhibits.
Source: Krone
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