What is it about this DiVinci portrait

of a young Florentine woman

in dark muted tones,

seated before an idealized landscape

that provokes such adulation?

Here in the Louvre

lines form through the great hall

past huge canvasses of Biblical scenes

and mythological conflict, raiment billowing,

colors driving the drama,

past all the bombast of the Italian Renaissance

to see the quiet woman, behind protective glass,

in the corner.

It must be the smile.

It must be those barely-turned corners of the mouth

that knowing, reserved expression

that makes people from all over the world

wait patiently along the cordons

for a brief glimpse of this enigma.

Who was she? A noted merchant’s wife?

Nowhere in his notes does Leonardo mention her.

One theorist even suggests that it’s a self-portrait –

a rendition of himself as a younger woman.

That would explain the smile – a smirk, perhaps,

as if the joke was on us.

01/18/2004

Author's Note: [Written before reading The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.]

Posted on 01/18/2004
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