8.5 million souls visit this room at the Louvre every year, & last June, I felt like the majority of them had picked the same day I had to (once again!) try to see this work of Leonardo's. After pushing my way to the front of the teeming throng, I managed to snap this pix of the almost disinterested crowd who had made the pilgrimage to see the holiest of holies, the iconic "Mona Lisa." I for one, quite like what Oscar Wilde said about the painting: "The picture becomes more wonderful to us than it really is, & reveals to us a secret of which, in truth, it knows nothing."Just last month Mona suffered yet another indignity (the 1st being her kidnapping, also in August - but way back in 1911) when a Russian woman, reputedly upset at not being awarded French citizenship, hurled her ceramic coffee mug at her. The terra-cotta vessel bounced off the thick bullet proof Plexiglas & predictably broke on the floor. In my mind's eye, the bored museum guards gave a Gallic shrug, made a faint moue, & sauntered off for le dust-pan & le whisk-broom, to just deal with it.
RS (Who loves his "Lady with an Ermine" aka Cecilia Gallerani, much more)
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