Page 59 of The Paris Trip

‘I take it that was the wrong thing to say?’ she demanded, again tilting her head to study him as though he were an alien specimen. He wasn’t sure if it was amusement or irritation he read in her face. There were small rosy apples in each cheek, and her fair hair was slightly mussed, which was unusual for such a tidy, well-presented creature, and she had her arms tightly folded across her chest in a defensive posture.

‘I…’ Leo frowned, genuinely unsure what to say. Embarrassed, even flustered, he stuck his hands in his pockets and jerked his head towards the next gallery. ‘Delacroix not your style, I take it? Okay, so let’s see if we can get a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, shall we? It’s not far… Besides, you said you weren’t sure what you thought of da Vinci’s masterpiece when you were here last time.’ He crooked an eyebrow at her. ‘Though you didn’t have me with you when you saw the painting.’

‘Oh, and having you with me will make all the difference?’

Now he really did laugh. ‘I just mean you’ll have someone to bounce ideas off. Someone who knows a thing or two about art, and about the Mona Lisa. I wrote a thesis on her in art school.’

‘Goodness,’ she said innocently. ‘So art school wasn’t just splashing paint around and building towers out of toilet roll inners?’

‘Oh, we did all that as well,’ he threw back at her, leading the way through the busy gallery towards the room where the Mona Lisa was housed. ‘But now and then, our tutors expected us to write to actual words about art and come to a few conclusions. They didn’t have to make sense, you understand. But I happen to enjoy looking at the Mona Lisa. There’s more to that painting than a mysterious smile.’

They had to queue, of course. And they were not alone in jostling about in front of the painting, which was housed safely behind bullet-proof glass. But soon they were standing in front of the Mona Lisa, and to his relief there was nobody forcing them to hurry past, despite the portrait’s universal popularity. It was coming up to lunchtime and the crowds in front of the Mona Lisa had briefly thinned.

Side by side with Maeve, he gazed up at the portrait that had so obsessed him in his youth, and found himself smiling back at the woman smiling down at him.

If that was a smile on the Italian lady’s beautiful face, which he sometimes doubted…

‘So, what do you think?’ he asked after a moment’s silent contemplation.

‘I think you’re holding my hand,’ Maeve told him softly.

His head jerked round and he stared at her, astonished. ‘What?’ Looking down, he realised with a jolt that she was correct.

Somehow, in some moment of unconscious craziness, he had taken her hand and was holding it close, their fingers interlaced. It had felt so natural he hadn’t even noticed.

He released her at once, muttering in a wave of heat, ‘I… I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did that.’

She was looking rattled too. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

Thrown, he stood rigid, arms by his sides, and stared fixedly up at the painting without seeing the long-dead woman depicted there.

What was happening to him?

Is this how da Vinci had felt, faced with his famous Muse? Dumbfounded, lightheaded, possessed by a strange urgency…

Maeve cleared her throat.

‘I… I was in such a tearing hurry when I came through here on my first visit,’ Maeve began to say, also gazing up at the painting, ‘that I didn’t even pay much attention to the history behind the painting. Too worried about falling behind schedule and missing my coach. Ironic, really, given what happened.’ She took a deep breath. ‘All right… I know this was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, of course. Everyone knows that. But I don’t know who the “Mona Lisa” is. Or why she seems to be smiling. If she is smiling.’ She frowned, glancing at him briefly as though for confirmation. ‘Do you know?’

‘Some background might be useful here.’ With a roll of his tense shoulders, Leo tried to relax, casting his mind back to the thesis paper he had written about this painting when he was younger. ‘The woman in the painting is generally considered to be Lisa Gheradini, who was married to a Florentine silk merchant called Francesco del Giocondo. Because of that, someone later nicknamed this portrait “La Gioconda” in Italian.’ He saw her confusion and added, ‘It’s a pun on her married name. “Giaconda” also means a happy or smiling woman, you see. The “jocund” one, you might say in English. So the nickname of the portrait is La Joconde in French. Or “the laughing lady” as my grandmother calls her.’

He studied the painting, confidence surging back as he warmed to his subject. ‘You want to know if she’s smiling? That’s always been a vexed question. Some people think it depends on which part of the painting you look at. If you look at it from one angle, she does seem to be amused. But if you shift your eye to another area, she suddenly looks serious. Or ironic, perhaps. Certainly her smile, if it is a smile, is known to be enigmatic.’

‘Is that why the painting is so famous? Because of her smile?’

‘Yes, mostly.’ He hesitated, studying the soft, delicate brushwork. ‘But also because of Leonardo da Vinci’s great skill in painting this. It’s so realistic, it could almost be a photograph.’ He pointed to the face of Lisa Gheradini. ‘You see the way light and shade are used to suggest her cheekbones and the orbital ridges around the eyes? That technique is called sfumato. Here, it indicates that the artist understands more than the surface of what is looking at. In this case, we’re seeing the skull beneath the Mona Lisa’s skin.’

‘That sounds macabre.’

Leo grinned. ‘Maybe. But what it demonstrates is how skilled da Vinci was at observation. Don’t forget this was painted in the Renaissance. That’s five hundred-odd years ago. Back then, painting was still at quite an early stage in terms of realism. And there are other things about the painting too that make it special. The intricate way he’s depicted the folds of her clothes, for example, and the way each lock of her hair is differentiated… So very realistic for its age.’ He paused. ‘Of course, there may have been other equally skilled painters alive at the same time. But because da Vinci had a powerful patron, he quickly became famous, and his paintings grew in fame too. I often wonder about lost paintings, lost painters… How much great art has been forgotten or destroyed over the centuries?’

She was frowning. ‘What do you mean?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s so simple to destroy a painting, that’s all. The work of a moment, really. To slash, burn, deface… It’s a miracle we have any art left from the Renaissance at all, when you consider how fragile these paintings are.’

He saw her shiver, and was surprised by that reaction. She must be a sensitive creature if the mere suggestion of destroying works of art had the power to distress her. It distressed him too, of course. But he was an artist, so was always mindful of how ephemeral some art could be. Besides, it was also a fact of life in this business.

Art had to be preserved and protected, especially in their age of cultural terrorism. That was why the Mona Lisa was kept safely behind bulletproof glass. But not everyone could appreciate why it mattered so much to preserve art for future generations.

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