Why Is She Smiling?

Meet Mona Lisa At The Booth Library

Five hundred years ago Leonardo Da Vinci painted his Mona Lisa, and since that time reams have been written about this unsigned and undated masterpiece. Most recently Dan Brown, author of the bestseller The Da Vinci Code, proposed an interesting theory that questioned the true identity of the young woman with the enigmatic smile.

Not much is known about the fashionable Florentine lady who was also called Lisa di Antonia Maria Gheradini Giacondo. Yet her likeness is world famous. Finished sometime between 1503 and 1506, the painting was done in oils on a small piece of pinewood measuring only 20 by 30 inches. It hangs today in the Louvre Museum in Paris and has been seen by millions.

Art historian Joy Pepe will visit the C.H. Booth Library on Tuesday, April 6, at 7 pm, to give a lecture and slide show on Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. The talk will discuss how Leonardo invigorated the traditions of female portraiture by presenting his subject in a mysterious light and in front of a fantasy landscape, leaving the beholder with many unanswered questions.

The Mona Lisa may have been one of the first works of art in which a modern-day psychological interpretation of the subject is presented. Discussion will center on the formal elements of the portrait, and will also consider the cultural context of the time –– Florence, Italy, during the late 15th Century and early 16th Century.

Joy Pepe is an associate professor of Art History at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts as well as a visiting assistant professor at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn. She has been curator for many exhibitions including some at the Yale Center for British Art and Lyme Academy College. She has also lectured on a variety of topics including “Michelangelo in Florence and Rome,” “Feminine Mystiques: Significant Women and their Portrayal in Western Myth and Religion,” and “Fiorenze/Venezia: Renaissance Art in Florence and Venus.”

Ms Pepe’s talk is co-sponsored by Center for the Book’s World of Words and the Friends of the Cyrenius H. Booth Library, and is a part of the library’s month long celebration of all things Italian. The program is free. To reserve a seat, call the library at 426-4533.