The Gioconda highlights the link between Leonardo and Manzoni. The background on the left-hand side is completely different from the one on the right-hand side. They are offset. The left side is higher than the right one If we could remove the Gioconda, the water from the left would flow into the right, as it is in the nature. “Disunited things will come together and will receive the virtue that will give back to human their lost memory”. This is the definition that Leonardo gives to the initiatory path, the spiritual marriage, let’s call it whatever we want. So what does he do with the background of the Gioconda? He unites disunited things. The two landscapes are part of the same landscape. The Gioconda is the representation of Leonardo’s Rebis, that is the representation of his feminine self, according to that reading of the disunited things that will come together. That is the representation of the Rebis of Leonardo. This one is preserved in Oxford. Therefore the Gioconda is the representation of the union of the opposites. “Everything is born according to strife and necessity, from discordant things springs beautiful harmony”. Heraclitus. It is not by chance that Bramante portrays Leonardo in the shoes of Heraclitus It is the first painting you find when entering the Brera gallery. So the left and the right background of the Gioconda are the continuation of the same landscape. Or better, they are two specular points of observation from Mount Canto, which is the first mountain that you encounter crossing the Po Valley, arriving in Lecco (where the Pope John XXIII was born) you see the course of the Adda river, Lecco on the background and the San Martino. From the San Martino you see the Mount Canto, as a mirror image. Hence Leonardo, with the landscape, does nothing but reinforcing the message contained inside the Gioconda, that is the Rebis, the spiritual marriage. In reality the landscapes of the Gioconda are 8. 3 on the left-hand side 3 on the right, the Gioconda herself, and her hands. Here we are in Gravedona. These are the tips of Dervio, Olgiasca, e Bellano on the north side of the lake. Where the lake changes direction towards Valtellina. Further north there is this representation, that you find at the Campelli. It is that natural amphitheater that divided the duchy of Milan from Bergamo, Republic of Venice. So with the Gioconda Leonardo is simply describing the northern border of the duchy of Milan. Therefore the Gioconda becomes the reinforcing element of this parallelism between Manzoni and Leonardo. Pascal Cotte, who is a French researcher who had the luck to analyze the Gioconda, on concession of the Louvre museum, he has discovered that around the head of the Gioconda there are a whole series of abrasions. Abrasions made by Leonardo himself. Naively Pascal Cotte affirmed that they were pins that were used by women of the Renaissance to look prettier. But Pascal Cotte cannot recognize something that is obvious to those who grew up between the Brianza and the Italian Switzerland. that is that these are the “swords” of the Sperada, that is that famous hairstyle of Lucia Mondella that becomes a social means to communicate her condition of betrothed. And the reference to the marriage is back once again. And do you know when this custom was born? Right in the years when Leonardo was painting around the Larian triangle. Here we are between 1480 and 1490. And the halo becomes a representation of the spiritual elevation, the light body, or whatever you want to call it. “… almost like rays of a halo, as the Milanese peasants still use” so writes Manzoni. This is Lucia Mondella, drawn by Gonin. Therefore Manzoni makes reference to the Gioconda that he could see exposed in the bedroom of Napoleon. And if Manzoni is inspired by the Gioconda, who is Leonardo inspired by to make the Gioconda? By the place where the lake from two becomes one. The promontory of Bellagio. “When you make the two one… and when you make the man and the woman as one, so that the man is not a man and the woman is not a woman” the androgynous “then you will enter the Kingdom”. Gospel of Thomas. If you focus on it, doesn’t it look like a woman?
And Bellagio is essential in the history of the duchy of Milan. Today it is where the Rockefeller foundation has a branch, but it was where Ludovico the Moor found refuge when he fled to Innsbruck, chased by the French. And Leonardo was often hosted there. Let’s see why the Gioconda is not the Gioconda. From what Vasari wrote, which is the reason why today we call her the Gioconda: “He took Lionardo to paint for Francesco del Giocondo the portrait of his wife Monna Lisa; and for four years he left it unfinished, and the work today is with King Francis of France in Fontainebleau… And in this opera of Lionardo there was such a pleasant smirk that it was more divine than human to see it, and it was marvelous for not being alive”. Two are the elements that make one lean towards the Gioconda. The name of the husband, being Francesco del Giocondo, and this darned smirk, for which everyone has thought that Vasari was describing the Gioconda. First thing first: “for four years he left it unfinished”. In reality this one in not unfinished. It is actually very detailed. On its right-hand side there are even very small rocky formations that if you go, or come with me, to the Forcellino or to Pian dei Resinelli, you can recognize. In line with that representative realism of which Leonardo was a master. Secondly, Vasari does not stop here with the description. He goes further. He makes reference to the lashes around the eyes, but what everyone thinks being the Gioconda does not have eyelashes. What you see between the eye is a xanthelasma, from which Leonardo suffered, that allows us to reconstruct, or discover, a whole series of portraits that represents Leonardo. The portrait of a musician, the sanguine, the Vitruvian man, all with this xanthelasma that is an accumulation of cholesterol which affected Leonardo. Only one person realized this, he was a Japanese doctor. Given his profession, and after going close to the painting he noticed the xanthelasma, and concluded that the Gioconda suffered from hypercholesterolemia. Again he could not think that he was looking at the portrait of Leonardo. But this is one of the elements for which we can say that this portrait represents Leonardo in his Rebis. There is another one that we will see in a very short time. We are almost done. I was saying, it is clear that Vasari is not making reference to the Gioconda. A further indirect confirmation comes from a note, that was found recently in Heidelberg, made by Agostino Vespucci, who was a Florentine notary. In 1503 he declares that the Gioconda was already finished. He referred at the Gioconda as the portrait of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. But everyone tells us that, Pedretti, etc, everyone says that the Gioconda was made between 1504 and 1506. Actually the Gioconda, the one that everyone today calls the Gioconda, was made before 1499. This is due to the characteristic of her dress, as it is believed that it could be associated to the duchy of the Sforza, and therefore before the French got to Milan. But this is not essential. A further hint comes from Antonio de Beatis, again, who is the one who went to meet Leonardo with the cardinal of Aragon, and who refers to that visit to Leonardo and speaks of three paintings: one requested by the Magnificent Giuliano de Medici, that cannot be the Gioconda, one is John the Baptist and the other one is The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. Therefore De Beatis sees three paintings, but the Gioconda is not among them. Beyond the fact that at that time they knew each other, and therefore if there was the portrayed of a dame he would have recognized it, not of a courtesan, a dame. This is a further element that leads us to believe that the Gioconda is the female portrait of Leonardo. Because the De Beatis mentions the disability of Leonardo to his right hand, which is why he can no longer paint. On this detail two Italian doctors in London published a study, two weeks ago. The news went around the whole world. But being right they were completely wrong. Because they took a drawing by Figino, that was the representation of Heraclitus and Democritus. But being a preparatory drawing the right hand would then become the left hand. They made a complete mess about it. But Leonardo in reality suffered from an arthrogenous ganglion, which is what blocked his right hand. Which is why, according to the De Beatis, he could no longer paint. The Louvre leads back the purchase of the Gioconda to 1518 together with St. Anne and John the Baptist, that were those paintings mentioned by De Beatis. The paintings were purchased by Francesco I with the mediation of Salai, who is not Leonardo’s lover, but Leonardo’s son (“Milanese by his creation” writes Vasari) according to a Royal receipt found in the 90’s in the Braidense library in Milan.
When Leonardo dies he does not leave any painting in his will. So those are the only ones, and the Gioconda is not mentioned. But why was the myth of the Gioconda born? (Before we saw what Vasari wrote). The first to name it Gioconda was Cassiano dal Pozzo on the occasion of his trip in France in 1625. He used the term Gioconda referring to the painting he saw in Fontainebleau, that with good probability in the one now exposed at the Louvre, but which has no connection with the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Until then the term was associated to a painting in the hands of Salai, and mentioned in an inventory of 1525, that is after Leonardo’s death, as the “The Honda”. So there is no reference to the fact that that painting that everyone goes to celebrate, everyone, I’m not speaking only of mere mortal men, I’m talking about Banksy, Warhol, Botero, Duchamp… There is not a documental correlation in the words of De Beatis that certifies that the one exposed at the Louvre is the painting that Vasari had called Monna Lisa. Also because we have seen that the painting that Vasari talks about is completely different. So the French, but it is actually the whole world, are celebrating something different from what it is. Hence the Gioconda is a mere presumption. And then again, hypothesis for hypothesis, let’s create a more realistic one. Keeping in mind that the Gioconda is not the Mona Lisa, the day after De Beatis returns to Blois and finds, among the paintings that are about to be sent to Fontainebleau, “an oil painting representing a certain “Lady of Lo’bardia” of natural beauty, but in my opinion not as beautiful as Ms. Gualanda” who was a courtesan of Aragon. So he used this Isabella Gualanda as term of comparison. However, there is a Lady of Lo’bardia among the paintings that De Beatis sees, and therefore, for all what I have shown you until now, all the connections to the landscape, the essential meaning of the Gioconda, the Sperada, the reference to Bellagio that looks like a lady, etcetera, etcetera. It is much more likely that the Lady of Lo’bardia is what the whole world calls Mona Lisa. But Mona Lisa is not. The name then changed with the time, becoming the Lady of Lo’bardia, Lady of Bellagio, the Gioconda, etc. When I say these things the orthodox academic world calls me crazy, and disregards elements that are documentary. Much more documented than the orthodox reconstructions, that are all but based on solid evidence. And quoting Baudelaire, “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music”. And as I always close my lecture: “The best are all crazy”. Alice in Wonderland.
Riccardo Magnani – This is not Leonardo da Vinci