MYSTERY OF MONA LISA

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 4 September 1935, Page 10

MYSTERY OF MONA LISA

PROFESSOR ’S ERUDITE THEORY. 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 the land. Rut 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 the 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 wjfe qf Francesco del Gioconda 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 galleries of Europe. His first clue was found among the letters of da Vinci; then he came upon a profile study of Isabella d’Elste, made by that supreme genius of the Italian Renaissance ; and, too, her image impressed ujion da Vinci’s signet ring. Then a statue, now in Berlin, was identified as a portrait of Isabella. Da Vinci, according to Dr. Stites, often corresponded with Isabella of the famous house of Eiste, who was a notable jiatron 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 mny 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 before “Mona Lisa,”, aloof and inscrutable behind her iron rail, raised upon her litle 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.