[The copy,
which also shows a much younger-looking figure, has once again ignited a debate
about whether Leonardo’s Mona Lisa should be restored as well. Ms. González
says this is a hard call for the Louvre because people are so used to the way
the painting looks now. But she cannot help being curious.]
By Suzanne Daley
Then, Ana González Mozo took an interest.
Over the last two years, Ms. González, a researcher in the
museum’s technical documentation department, has used all manner of modern-day
techniques — X-rays, infrared reflectography and high-resolution digital
images, among others — to make, and then document, an unlikely finding.
It turns out that the Prado’s Mona Lisa is not just any
500-year-old copy. It was most likely painted by someone who was sitting right
next to Leonardo da Vinci, trying
to duplicate his every brush stroke, as he produced his famous lady with the
enigmatic smile.
When Leonardo adjusted the size of the Mona Lisa’s head or
corrected her hands or slimmed her bosom or lowered her bodice, so did whoever
was painting the Prado’s Mona Lisa.
“It had to be painted at the same time,” Ms. González said.
“Someone who copies doesn’t make corrections because they haven’t ever seen the
changes. They can see only the surface of the painting.”
The discovery is primarily important for what it reveals
about the real Mona Lisa, a painting that has been darkened by layers of aging
lacquer.
The copy, now restored, offers details that are obscured in
the original Mona Lisa. For instance, the copy shows an armrest where none can
be seen in the original, and reflectographs show a much clearer image of her
waistline.
“What is really important about the copy is that we can see
how Leonardo worked,” Ms. González said. “We know something new about his
creative process.”
The copy, which also shows a much younger-looking figure,
has once again ignited a debate about whether Leonardo’s Mona Lisa should be
restored as well. Ms. González says this is a hard call for the Louvre because
people are so used to the way the painting looks now. But she cannot help being
curious.
Most of the time, Ms. González spends her hours looking
beneath the surface of the Prado’s masterpieces, searching for insights into
the artists’ methods and thinking. And there, she said, she has found great treasures.
Many important paintings have sketches or first tries — adjusted and reworked —
under the final image. Sometimes, she said, the work underneath is even more
fascinating than the painting itself.
“I get to see what only the artist saw,” she said. “And he
saw it five centuries ago.”
ON a recent visit, Ms. González’s work space was as cool
and tidy as any computer lab. Only a messy pool of life-size images of the
Louvre’s Mona Lisa and the Prado’s copy spread out on a table suggested her
purpose.
She ran her hands over the photographs, pausing over the
similarities; they were clear even to the untrained eye. What was she thinking
when she made these discoveries? Was she in awe?
She shrugged off such questions. “Other people have asked
me that,” she said, by way of an answer. “I am very calm, very prudent. When I
made the discovery, I talked to the curator here.”
Some art magazines have speculated that the Prado’s Mona
Lisa was painted by Leonardo’s lover. But Ms. González has no patience for such
gossipy talk. “That is irrelevant,” she said. “We don’t know that. And that is
not what the work here is about.”
Until two years ago, the Prado, which inherited the
painting with the rest of the royal collection in 1819, displayed it but never
suspected its significance. It was catalogued without fanfare as an anonymous
copy, painted on poplar.
The copy’s background was black, and the painting was
covered in a layer of dark varnish, which gave it a yellowish glow and further
diminished its vibrancy.
But the Louvre was planning a special exhibition of
Leonardo’s work and, because it did not want to move the original Mona Lisa
from its protected area, wanted to borrow the Prado painting as a stand-in. A
casual comment by one of the Louvre curators, asking whether the painting had
ever been studied, got Ms. González thinking.
The next day she took her infrared camera into the gallery
and got to work. Just the first pictures were enough for her to conclude that
the two paintings had been produced in tandem. After that, it was just a
question of watching the evidence pile up.
Perhaps the most exciting discovery was that the painting’s
original background had been obscured by a layer of black paint, a practice
sometimes used in the 18th century. Luckily, a layer of lacquer protected what
was under it. So, once the paint was removed, the same Tuscan background as in
Leonardo’s painting appeared, offering a tantalizing preview of what might be
seen if Leonardo’s Mona Lisa were restored.
THERE is no doubt, however, that the Prado painting was not
a copy made by Leonardo himself. While the corrections are identical, the lines
are not. “Like I write an A and you write an A, you can tell it is not the
same,” Ms. González said.
Parts of the Prado copy are beautiful, she said, like the
hands. But in general, it is not nearly so fine a painting.
Just why it was made remains an open question. It could
have been simply for a pupil’s instruction or a double commission.
Ms. González started working at the Prado 16 years ago,
when she was completing her doctorate, one of the first art researchers to
focus on the use of computer techniques to study paintings. “We did not even
have Windows when I started as a student,” she said. But little by little, she
said, computer techniques of all kinds have become important tools in studying
paintings.
Everyone in her family is a scientist, she said. Her choice
to get a fine arts degree was a sort of rebellion.
When she begins studying a painting, she does a drawing of
it, she said, as a way to familiarize herself with the work.
Ms. González seems somewhat indifferent to the attention
her recent discovery is getting. She said she had participated in far more
spectacular discoveries. For instance, she said, X-rays and infrared
reflectographs show that Tintoretto sketched nude figures under his clothed
ones.
But, somehow, it is the copy of the Mona Lisa that everyone
is talking about.
“It has grabbed people’s imagination,” she said. “She is an
icon.”
The Prado’s Mona Lisa is on loan to the Louvre until June.
