Вот уже около 500 лет экспертам-искусствоведам не дает покоя вопрос: что скрывается за загадочной улыбкой «джоконды». И кто она была на самом деле в жизни.

Сегодня со всей очевидностью доказано что изображенная на шедевре Леонардо да Винчи молодая женщина не являлась женой Франческо дель Джокондо, как это считалось раньше. Опровергнуты версии, согласно которым оригиналами для Моны Лизы послужили либо известная в те времена куртизанка Изабель д’Эсте, либо наряженный в женские одежды молодой человек – тезка художника.

Кто только не пытался раскрыть тайну улыбки «Джоконды». Даже медики. Одни из них настаивали на том, что улыбка молодой женщины – прямой результат … врожденного паралича лица. Другие находили признаки астматического заболевания, которое, дескать, и привело к появлению столь необычной улыбки.

Оригинальную версию разгадки шедевра Леонардо да Винчи предложила на проходящей в Париже Международной ярмарке современного искусства канадская художница Сюзанна Жиро. В течение нескольких лет она самым тщательным образом изучала все, что было когда-либо написано о Леонардо. Затем Сюзанна отпечатала многие сотни снимков, на которых крупным планом были выделены разные детали картины: глаза, руки, нос, губы. Параллельно Сюзанна исследовала записи Леонардо да Винчи, а мэтр систематически заносил в дневники не только свои мысли по поводу анатомии, механики, в которых был непререкаемым авторитетом тех лет, но и свои разработки и идеи в области баллистики, военного дела, музыки. Интересная деталь: будучи левшой, Леонардо писал справа налево развернутыми влево буквами. Так что для прочтения текста необходимо пользоваться зеркалом.

Вообще художник любил игру зеркал и считал, что по-настоящему картину можно оценить лишь в зеркальном отражении. Канадская художница решила, последовав методу Леонардо, проделать то же самое с заключенными в рамы увеличенными деталями лица Моны Лизы. Совершенно случайно, ставя перед зеркалом изображение губ «Джоконды», Сюзанна наклонила раму на 90 градусов и … вместо джокондовской улыбки перед ней появилось четкое изображение юношеской спины, крестца, части плеча и локтя. Не поверив своим глазам, Сюзанна сразу же продемонстрировала, не давая предварительных объяснений, эту «картину» своим друзьям. Реакция была такой же. Предположив, что подобное возможно и с другими картинами Леонардо, молодая канадка проделала с их копиями такой же эксперимент. Однако ни с ними, ни с полотнами других «великих» желаемого эффекта не получилось. Из этого Сюзанна сделала вывод, что Леонардо специально «вмонтировал» двусмысленную загадку в свою картину.

Вы спросите: почему мужская спина? Здесь можно лишь строить догадки. И тем не менее известно, что художник оставил довольно много эскизов с изображением мужских торсов, особенно видов со спины. Это во-первых. Ну а во-вторых, не секрет, что да Винчи был в жизни абсолютно равнодушен к женским чарам и предпочитал им мужское общество.

Художник провел, как это сейчас установлено, более десяти тысяч часов над «Джокондой». Это была ювелирная работа: используя увеличительное стекло, Леонардо наносил краски точечными мазками, не превышающими одну двадцатую часть миллиметра! С картиной он не расставался вплоть до смерти 2 мая 1519 года. Только после этого она отошла французскому королю Франциску 1, который покровительствовал великому художнику и мыслителю последние годы его жизни.

Итак, можно ли назвать находку Сюзаны Жиро разгадкой Моны Лизы? Думаю, что вряд ли. Штрихом к легенде, опутывающей нетленный шедевр? Пожалуй, да, но не больше. Судя по всему, Джоконде предстоит завораживать своей улыбкой не одно поколение, побуждая людей биться над разгадкой ее тайны.

(Вячеслав Прокофьев
Соб. корр. «Труда», Париж. 6 ноября 1993 года)

VII. Here are two extracts from the novels by I. Murdoch. Study and compare them from the point of view of the author’s attitude to art and painting in particular. What is the most important for her, what genres of painting does I. Murdoch prefer? Answer the questions after the texts and try to retell them. Write an essay on the author’s interest towards art.

The taxi stopped, at Rains request, just off Bond Street, and they got out. Mor looked round vaguely. Then he saw a poster beside a door near by. It read: FARTHER AND DAUGHTER. An Exhibition of Works by SIDNEY and RAIN CARTER.

Rain watched him, delighted at his surprise, and began to lead him in. Mor felt considerable emotion. Except for the portrait of Demoyte, he had seen no paintings by Rain, or her farther, in original or reproduction. He felt both excited and nervous. He began to think at once that he might hate the exhibition. They climbed the stairs.

They began to walk round. Mor was not used to looking at pictures, and these ones startled him. They were very various. Some were meticulous and decorative, like the portrait of Demoyte, others very much more impressionistic, with the paint plastered heavily upon the canvas. After making one or two wrong guesses, Mor gave up pretending to know which were Rain’s and which were her father’s. There seemed to be no way of deciding on grounds of style.

Rain said, I’m only just beginning to develop my own style. My father was such a powerful painter, and such a strong personality, I was practically made in his image. It will be a long time before I know what I have in myself.’

There was a portrait of a young girl with long black plaits, leaning over the keyboard of a piano.

‘Who is that?’ said Mor, although he already knew.

‘Me,’ said Rain.

‘Did your father paint it?’

‘No, I did.’

They moved on quickly to the next picture. Rain’s father stood in a doorway, leaning against the jamb of the door. Beyond him through the door could be seen a dazzling expanse of sea.

‘I painted that too,’ said Rain. “That’s a more recent one, not quite so awful. That’s through the door of our house.’

They moved from picture to picture. Almost all were either pictures of the house, or of the landscape near it, or self-portraits, or portraits of each other, by the father and daughter. There were two or three pictures of Paris, and about five portraits of other people. Mor looked with bewilderment and a kind of deeply pleasurable distress upon this vivid southern world, and he could smell the southern air. And here at last in the room that he had come to recognize as the drawing-room sat a blackhaired girl in a flowered summer dress. The picture had something of the fresh primness of a Victorian photo. This was a Rain whom Mor recognized, the Rain of today.

(From “The Sandcastle” by Iris Murdoch)

Dora had been in the National Gallery a thousand times and the pictures were almost as familiar to her as her own face. Passing between them now, as through a well-loved grove, she felt a calm descending on her. She wandered a little, watching with compassion the poor visitors armed with guide books who were peering anxiously at the masterpieces. Dora did not need to peer. She could look, as one can at last when one knows a great thing very well, confronting it with a dignity which it has itself conferred. She felt that the pictures belonged to her, and reflected ruefully that they were about the only thing that did. Vaguely, consoled by the presence of something welcoming and responding in the place, her footsteps took her to various shrines at which she had worshipped so often before: the great light spaces of Italian pictures, more vast and southern than any real South, the angels of Botticelli, radiant as birds, delighted as goods, and curling like tendrils of a vine, the glorious carnal presence of Susanna Fourment, the tragic presence of Margarethe Trip, the solemn world of Piero della Francesca with its early-morning colours, the enclosed and gilded world of Crivelli. Dora stopped at last in front of Gainsborough’s picture of his two daughters. These children step through a wood hand in hand, their garments shimmering, their eyes serious and dark, their two pale heads, round full buds, like yet unlike.

Dora was always moved by the pictures. Today she was moved, but in a new way. She marveled, with a kind of gratitude, that they were all still here, and her heart was filled with love for the pictures, their authority, their marvelous generosity, their splendour …

The pictures were something real outside herself, which spoke to her kindly and yet in sovereign tones, something superior and good whose presence destroyed the dreary trance-like solipsism of her earlier mood. When the world had seemed to be subjective it had seemed to be without interest or value. But now there was something else in it after all.

These thoughts, not clearly articulated flitted through Dora’s mind. She had never thought about the pictures in this way before; nor did she draw now any very explicit moral. Yet she felt that she had had a revelation. She looked at the radiant, somber, tender, powerful canvas of Gainsborough and felt a sudden desire to go down on her knees before it, embracing it, shedding tears.

(From “The Bell” by Iris Murdoch)

Questions:

1. What do you know about the National Gallery in London? Where is it situated? What schools of painting are represented there? Can you name any famous pictures? What other world famous picture galleries do you know?

2. What did Dora think about the Italian pictures? How are Botticelli’s angels described?

3. How do you understand the phrase “glorious carnal presence of Susanna Fourment”?

4. In what new way was Dora moved by the pictures? What sudden desire did Dora feel looking at the radiant, somber, tender, powerful canvas of Gainsborough?

5. What are guide books for? Do you need a guide book in a picture gallery? Do you enjoy visiting exhibitions and galleries? What pictures appeal to you most? Have you ever been moved by a painting in a special way?

VIII. Soames Forsyte (one of the main characters of the “The Forsyte Saga” by J. Galsworthy) is one of the best representatives of those who are collectors and connoisseurs of art. What traits of character should such people possess? How experienced should they be? What is the main for them in such an activity (their hobby, interest or money, profit, etc.)? What is the author’s view point on it?