A Popular Lady

Mona Lisa, a photo by dlnwelch on Flickr.

I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't this. The crowd to see the Mona Lisa was non stop, pushing and crowding their way to snap a shot with their digital cameras. Da Vinci's portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is undoubtedly the most popular painting in the history of art. I had hoped to spend some time studying her eyes and facial expression, and creating my own theories for the famed mystique. Instead I observed from a distance the frenzied crowd who could now say they had seen her. I have read that on average a person only looks at the painting for 15-20 seconds.  You can hardly get any sense of the paining with that short of time. Anyway, I saw the Mona Lisa, so I guess that's something.