Prince of Procrastination

Charcoal by Victor McGhee


Prince of Procrastination

“She is older than the rocks among which she sits; has been
dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave.”
---Walter Pater (1867)

Yes, it’s true, the lady is 500 years old.
La Giconda, Madame Lisa, widely accepted
by most to be the 24 year old Lisa del Giocondo,
wife of a wealthy silk merchant,
who sat upright for the half-figure portrait,
possessing that enigmatic smile, that barely
stifled laugh that critics have pondered forever,
searching for its impetus--pronouncing
and proclaiming her to be deaf, toothless,
in mourning, a highly paid tart, a victim of syphilis,
palsy or paralysis, or just a bizarre reflection
of Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci’s neuroses.

Da Vinci, reputed to be homosexual, never married,
and it was written that he possessed
“outstanding physical beauty”. Certainly Lisa never
received the painting. He started it in 1504,
worked on it for four years, and then left it unfinished.
He took it with him to France and only completed
it a short time before his death in 1519; dead
at the advanced age of 67. Mystery enshrouds
this dwarf masterpiece, only 30” tall and 20 7/8” wide,
and it only deepens as decades give way to centuries.
Did Leo paint his own likeness as a lark, or was it
his mother, Caterina, or his male apprentice
and possible lover, the roguish Gian Giacomo?

6 million people a year march down the Salles des Etats
to see her, pausing only 20 seconds to admire the
plucked physiognomy, Leonardo’s genius--
his techniques of contraposto, sfumatio, chiaroscuro,
and pyramidal composition, making his brushstrokes
almost indistinguishable, painted in medieval oils
on poplar wood panel.

The old girl, this tiny titan, has become
“The most famous portrait in the world”,
and it has had more homes and adventures
than a Dumas heroine. At one point,
Louis XIV moved it to the Palace at Versailles.
After the French Revolution, it moved to the Louvre.
Soon thereafter, Napoleon moved it to his bedroom
in the Tuileries Palace--and then it came back
to the Louvre. During the Franco-Prussian War
it was moved to the Brest Arsenal. In 1911
the painting was stolen. Pablo Picasso was one
of the two accused suspects. Two years later
they figured out that an Italian janitor at the museum
had taken it, and hung it on the wall of his apartment;
feeling that somehow it needed to go back to Italy.
In the midst of WWII, in order to hide it from the Nazis,
it was removed and hidden in an Abbey, two Chateaus,
and some other museum.

At the Louvre it hangs behind bullet proof glass
because in 1956 a woman threw acid on the bottom
of it, and another woman threw a stone at it.
In 1974 a handicapped woman, angry at the
poor access for the disabled, sprayed red paint at it
in protest. In 2009 a Russian woman
threw a terra cotta teacup at it--and somehow
she has survived numerous restorations, touch-ups,
and scrubbings as the calendars pile up at her feet.

Nothing seems able to diminish its worth or allure.
She will hold court for centuries to come, will not
utter truth nor rumor, will never part those lips
and activate her dimples, will never reclaim
her eyebrows or lashes, will never fully reveal
her identity--she will remain an ethereal enigma
wrapped in smoky sfumatio, masked in mystery
throughout the coming ages, remaining smug
and clueless in a sparkling bullet-proof glass
case that reflects more of you
than it reveals of her.

Glenn Buttkus

March 2010

Listed as #45 over on Magpie Tales 59

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