For that is what the Monna Vanna is. The Mona Lisa, which Leonardo worked on obsessively for years and kept with him until his death in , is a painting of veiled ambiguities. Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the Florentine woman who posed for it, wears a diaphanous silk headcovering almost too thin to see, and subtle mysteries resonate from her shadowed eyes to the distant riverscape. There is a drawing by him depicting his beautiful painting St John the Baptist, but instead of ending at the waist as the painting does, the sketch shows a robust erection. Leonardo was twice accused of homosexuality a capital offence in Renaissance Europe , which may be one reason he left Florence to work in Milan. One thing is for sure — the fluid gender of this nude shows why Leonardo is still modern years after his death. Did Leonardo da Vinci create a nude Mona Lisa — and if so, who was the model? The Louvre thinks the great Renaissance master might be behind the charcoal sketch known as the Monna Vanna, and the sitter might not be a woman. Topics Leonardo da Vinci Shortcuts features.


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Art experts may have solved a riddle that has been baffling them for years: whether a drawing of a nude woman, bearing a striking resemblance to the Mona Lisa, is a Leonardo da Vinci original. Following extensive testing, investigators from the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France C2RMF say the charcoal drawing, known as the "Monna Vanna" or "Nude Mona Lisa," was completed in da Vinci's studio and may have been the work of the master himself. The drawing was previously thought to have been completed by da Vinci's students. Experts at the center found that much of the work was completed by a left-handed artist, supporting theories that da Vinci was the creator. Left-handed charcoal marks hint at da Vinci's involvement. They also found that the drawing featured da Vinci's preferred "sfumato" technique, a process of blurring color transitions, concluding that the piece was not a copy of a lost original.
Despite some similarities, the nude drawing above is not a naked version of the Mona Lisa. Is an old mystery about to be solved? The exhibition will present detailed evidence that the work, attributed to a follower, may well have been made by Leonardo himself. And the subject? A new interpretation suggests instead that this may be an idealised female portrait, depicting the sitter as Venus, the comely goddess of love. The drawing had never been subject to detailed analysis until last spring, when it underwent an exhaustive examination by the French Museums Laboratory. At the very least, all indications point to his workshop and the making of a pretty ambitious work. But he has co-curated the show at Chantilly.
La Joconde nue or Monna Vanna is a — charcoal drawing with white highlights by the school of Leonardo da Vinci. It is a semi-nude portrait of a woman, by inch in size. About twenty similar paintings of "nude Mona Lisas" are known; a famous one from da Vinci's school is the Donna nuda at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. This art -related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.