MYSTERY OF ‘MONA LISA'

Evening Star, Issue 22086, 20 July 1935, Page 18

MYSTERY OF ‘MONA LISA'

The matter-of-fact may rejoice' that Dr Raymond S. Stites, of Antioch College in Ohio, has added materially to the world’s store of useful knowledge, says the * Christian Science Monitor.’ Their voice is, perhaps loud in' tha land, but the dreamers are not actually inarticulate, and this is, obviously* their opportunity to rise up in a body' of formidable protest. For what lover of the arts would willingly credit tha Professor’s erudite theory that Mona Lisa ’ is not ‘ Mona Lisa,’ after all—• she whom we have called ‘La Gioconda,’ because we have believed her to have been the wife of Francesco del Giocondo of Naples? Dr Stites, it appears, has been studying the matter of'the lady’s identity for years, in and out of the libraries and art galleriers of Europe. HU first clue was found among the letter# of da Vinci; then he came upon a profile study of Isabella d’Este, made by that supreme genius of the Italian Renaissance; and, too, her image impressed upon da Vinci’s signet ring.Then a statue, now in Berlin, wai identified as a portrait of Isabella. Da Vinci, according to Dr Stites, often corresponded with Isabella of tha famous house of Este, who was a notable .patron of the arts at her ducal court in Mantua. - It is all impressive—and , persuasive enough in a way. Vasari may have been wrong, of course, and so may. the ‘Britannica ’ and most of the other standard books of reference, all of which accept the theory of “ La Gioconda.” But many will prefer to go on believing as these authorities do, especially those who have mused 1 before “ Mona Lisa,” aloof and inscrutable behind her iron rail, raised upon her little dais, in one of the smaller , galleries of the Louvre. Tradition may not so readily be tampered with. Perhaps they will notice the deepening lines of “ Mona Lisa,s ” smile.' For she does not intend us to understand her.