The Museo Nacional del Prado offers its visitors until January 23 the exhibition curated by Ana González Mozo “Leonardo and the copy of Mona Lisa. New approaches to the practice of the Vincentian workshop”.

The exhibition has the collaboration of the Comunidad de Madrid and other international institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, the National Gallery in London or the Molecular Archaeology Laboratory of the Sorbonne University, is composed of an important selection of copies and versions of the Mona Lisa made by the disciples and followers of Leonardo da Vinci.

The articulating axis of the exhibition is marked by the version kept by the Museo del Prado, considered as the copy of the oldest preserved painting. Although this is the copy that looks the least like the original La Gioconda, it is believed that this is so because this version reproduces the original picture before it was finished. Although the authorship of the copyist who executed this version is still unknown, experts consider that he should be a disciple very close to Da Vinci.

Thanks to the scientific analyses carried out on these copies we can understand much better the facet of Leonardo as a teacher and also get a more precise idea of how he worked in the Italian workshops of the Renaissance.

Art for the Hungry.

Text: Iustinian Bolohan.

Photos:Museo del Prado y Infrared reflectography of the Mona Lisa, (Museo Nacional del Prado), detail. Made by the Museo Nacional de Prado.

HōRNō _ Online Art Gallery