Mona Lisa, you sly little minx, you. We always knew there was a good story behind that saucy smirk. Now we know: you posed nudie for Leonardo da Vinci!
Don’t bother to deny it. We know this finding, pulled from inside a wall where it was hidden for who knows how long like a dog-eared copy of Letters to Penthouse, is probably not your twin, your daughter, your mama or your great-aunt Kelly. It’s you!
Documents suggest that it’s probably the work of Leo himself, though perhaps on another yet-to-be-found painting (just how many did you pose for?). And we know he was totally into your pretty face, likely painting it in several different ways. But you in the buff, oh famous lady, is quite a site to see.
Even Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Louvre, says the resemblance is uncanny. “The frontal look, the position of the hands, the spatial conception of the landscape, with columns at the sides, show a clear link with the Mona Lisa's iconographic theme," he says. Oh, snap.
And given that Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch, who owned your bare-bust painting, also wrote that he’d bought "the portrait of the Mona Lisa, mistress of Francis I, by Leonardo da Vinci,” this could just be the real you.
But why hide it in the walls? You sure look happier in this painting, and certainly less like a funeral attendant. I say we post your new portrait up right next to the old one and you can forever be proud, pretty, and yes, nudie.
