Misplaced Pages

#477522

186-493: The Mona Lisa ( / ˌ m oʊ n ə ˈ l iː s ə / MOH -nə LEE -sə ; Italian : la Gioconda [la dʒoˈkonda] or Monna Lisa [ˈmɔnna ˈliːza] ; French : la Joconde [la ʒɔkɔ̃d] ) is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci . Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance , it has been described as "the best known,

372-987: A white poplar panel . Leonardo never gave the painting to the Giocondo family. It was believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. King Francis I of France acquired the Mona Lisa after Leonardo's death in 1519, and it is now the property of the French Republic. It has normally been on display at the Louvre in Paris since 1797. The painting's global fame and popularity partly stem from its 1911 theft by Vincenzo Peruggia , who attributed his actions to Italian patriotism—a belief it should belong to Italy. The theft and subsequent recovery in 1914 generated unprecedented publicity for an art theft , and led to

558-422: A 1477 printing of a volume by ancient Roman philosopher Cicero . Dated October 1503, the note was written by Leonardo's contemporary Agostino Vespucci . This note likens Leonardo to renowned Greek painter Apelles , who is mentioned in the text, and states that Leonardo was at that time working on a painting of Lisa del Giocondo. In response to the announcement of the discovery of this document, Vincent Delieuvin,

744-541: A common source, or fonds , should be kept together – where practicable, physically, but in all cases intellectually, in the way in which they are catalogued and arranged in finding aids . Conversely, records of different provenance should be preserved and documented separately. In archival practice, proof of provenance is provided by the operation of control systems that document the history of records kept in archives, including details of amendments made to them. The authority of an archival document or set of documents of which

930-428: A conservation and study team replaced the maple crosspieces with sycamore ones, and an additional metal crosspiece was added for scientific measurement of the panel's warp. The Mona Lisa has had many different decorative frames in its history. In 1909, the art collector Comtesse de Béhague gave the portrait its current frame, a Renaissance-era work consistent with the historical period of the Mona Lisa . The edges of

1116-493: A detailed provenance is given in the Arnolfini portrait . The quality of provenance of an important work of art can make a considerable difference to its selling price in the market. This is affected by the degree of certainty of the provenance, the status of past owners as collectors, and in many cases by the strength of evidence that an object has not been illegally excavated or exported from another country. The provenance of

1302-530: A geomorphology professor at Urbino University and an artist-photographer revealed that Mona Lisa ' s landscape was similar to some views in the Montefeltro region in the Italian provinces of Pesaro and Urbino , and Rimini . Research in 2023/2024 by geologist and art historian Ann Pizzorusso suggests that the landscape contains "several recognisable features of Lecco , on the shores of Lake Como in

1488-446: A great deal of effort into researching the provenance of paintings in their collections for which there is no firm provenance during that period. Documented evidence of provenance for an object can help to establish that it has not been altered and is not a forgery, a reproduction, stolen or looted art . Provenance helps assign the work to a known artist, and a documented history can be of use in helping to prove ownership. An example of

1674-510: A huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages— ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton , etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when

1860-471: A little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home. Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country. In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016. Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of

2046-657: A local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels ( phonology , morphology , syntax , lexicon , pragmatics ) and are classified typologically as distinct languages. The standard Italian language has

SECTION 10

#1732764862478

2232-472: A more general work on the artist, period or genre. Similarly, a photograph of a painting may show inscriptions (or a signature) that subsequently became lost as a result of overzealous restoration. Conversely, a photograph may show that an inscription was not visible at an earlier date. One of the disputed aspects of the "Rice" portrait of Jane Austen concerns apparent inscriptions identifying artist and sitter. Provenance – also known as custodial history –

2418-638: A moustache and goatee. Duchamp added an inscription, which when read out loud in French sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" meaning: "she has a hot ass", implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and intended as a Freudian joke . According to Rhonda R. Shearer , the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modelled on Duchamp's own face. Salvador Dalí , famous for his surrealist work, painted Self portrait as Mona Lisa in 1954. Andy Warhol created serigraph prints of multiple Mona Lisa s, called Thirty Are Better than One , following

2604-588: A painting whose current ownership and location are known, it is important to record the physical details of the painting – style, subject, signature, materials, dimensions, frame, etc. The titles of paintings and the attribution to a particular artist may change over time. The size of the work and its description can be used to identify earlier references to the painting. The back of a painting can contain significant provenance information. There may be exhibition marks, dealer stamps, gallery labels and other indications of previous ownership. There may be shipping labels. In

2790-417: A photograph of the item with its original owner. Simple yet definitive documentation such as that can increase its value by an order of magnitude, but only if the owner was of high renown. Many items that were sold at auction have gone far past their estimates because of a photograph showing that item with a famous person. Some examples include antiques owned by politicians, musicians, artists, actors, etc. In

2976-409: A piano's provenance. Pianos can sell for millions of dollars, when the provenance is significant enough to increase its value well beyond what it would be worth as a musical instrument alone. When decisions need to be made in a court of law for a bankruptcy, or before a piano goes up for auction, or when an educational institution needs to establish a value for a deed of trust being established with

3162-658: A poetic and literary origin in the works of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, although the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century, the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as

3348-504: A private transaction, there may be a bill of sale or sales receipt that provides evidence of provenance. Where the artist is known, there may be a catalogue raisonné listing all the artist's known works and their location at the time of writing. A database of catalogues raisonné is available at the International Foundation for Art Research . Historic photos of the painting may be discussed and illustrated in

3534-417: A renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i.e., the problem of the language ), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving

3720-534: A representation of the femme fatale . The Baedeker guide in 1878 called it "the most celebrated work of Leonardo in the Louvre", but the painting was known more by the intelligentsia than the general public. The 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa and its subsequent return was reported worldwide, leading to a massive increase in public recognition of the painting. During the 20th century, it was an object for mass reproduction, merchandising, lampooning, and speculation, and

3906-420: A result, it was thought that the Mona Lisa had been trimmed. However, by 1993, Frank Zöllner observed that the painting surface had never been trimmed; this was confirmed through a series of tests in 2004. In view of this, Vincent Delieuvin , curator of 16th-century Italian painting at the Louvre, states that the sketch and these other copies must have been inspired by another version, while Zöllner states that

SECTION 20

#1732764862478

4092-575: A result. Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts . Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of

4278-400: A rock at the Mona Lisa while it was on display at the Louvre. He did so with such force that it shattered the glass case and dislodged a speck of pigment near the left elbow. The painting was protected by glass because a few years earlier a man who claimed to be in love with the painting had cut it with a razor blade and tried to steal it. Since then, bulletproof glass has been used to shield

4464-505: A seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ , as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin . Some examples: Provenance The primary purpose of tracing the provenance of an object or entity is normally to provide contextual and circumstantial evidence for its original production or discovery, by establishing, as far as practicable, its later history, especially

4650-479: A single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible ; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility

4836-460: A site. Artifacts can be moved through looting as well as trade, far from their place of origin and long before modern rediscovery. Many source nations have passed legislation forbidding the domestic trade in cultural heritage. Further research is often required to establish the true provenance and legal status of a find, and what the relationship is between the exact provenience and the overall provenance. In paleontology and paleoanthropology , it

5022-513: A united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to

5208-429: A work of art may vary greatly in length, depending on context or the amount that is known, from a single name to an entry in a scholarly catalogue some thousands of words long. An expert certification can mean the difference between an object having no value and being worth a fortune. Certifications themselves may be open to question. Jacques van Meegeren forged the work of his father Han van Meegeren , who had forged

5394-427: Is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan , 85% with Sardinian , 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese , 78% with Ladin , 77% with Romanian . Estimates may differ according to sources. One study, analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology , inflection , discourse , syntax , vocabulary , and intonation ), estimated that distance between Italian and Latin

5580-691: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . Italian is the least divergent language from Latin , together with Sardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are the most conservative Romance languages). Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy , San Marino , Switzerland ( Ticino and

5766-449: Is a core concept within archival science and archival processing . The term refers to the individuals, groups, or organizations that originally created or received the items in an accumulation of records, and to the items' subsequent chain of custody . The principle of provenance, also termed the principle of "archival integrity", and a major strand in the broader principle of respect des fonds , stipulates that records originating from

Mona Lisa - Misplaced Pages Continue

5952-759: Is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country. Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin , a development that triggered the " Niçard exodus ", or the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy, and the Niçard Vespers . Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about

6138-417: Is an inscription on the object, or an account of it in written materials from the same era, an object of study in archaeology or cultural anthropology may have an early provenance – a known history that predates modern research – then a provenience from its modern finding, and finally a continued provenance relating to its handling and storage or display after the modern acquisition. Evidence of provenance in

6324-561: Is authenticated before a piano is inducted into a museum, sold at an auction, or appraised for an estate or legal action, when it has extraordinary value in connection to a composer, performer, event or location that has become famous. For example, the piano that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used during the final 10 years of his life, is on display in the Mozarteum Museum in Salzberg, one of many historical pianos in museums around

6510-534: Is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin. In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian . As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French; see Swiss Italian ), although its use there has moderately declined since

6696-401: Is in a remarkable state of preservation." It has never been fully restored, so the current condition is partly due to a variety of conservation treatments the painting has undergone. A detailed analysis in 1933 by Madame de Gironde revealed that earlier restorers had "acted with a great deal of restraint." Nevertheless, applications of varnish made to the painting had darkened even by the end of

6882-439: Is in such great demand among visitors to the museum; the painting remained on display in its gallery. In 2024, it was decided to place the panel in a separate room. This change will require significant construction changes, including a new entrance to the Louvre and two rooms in the basement under the museum's square courtyard. Due to the renovation, visitors will be able to pass directly to the painting, which will reduce queues at

7068-460: Is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language without slang/jargon. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it

7254-504: Is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties ) and a local language of Italy , most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin. Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of

7440-462: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around

7626-401: Is portrayed seated in what appears to be an open loggia with dark pillar bases on either side. Behind her, a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains, winding paths and a distant bridge, giving only the slightest indications of human presence. Leonardo has chosen to place the horizon line not at the neck, as he did with Ginevra de' Benci , but on a level with the eyes, thus linking the figure with

Mona Lisa - Misplaced Pages Continue

7812-430: Is recognized that fossils can also move from their primary context and are sometimes found, apparently in-situ , in deposits to which they do not belong because they have been moved, for example, by the erosion of nearby but different outcrops . It is unclear how strictly paleontology maintains the provenience and provenance distinction. For example, a short glossary at a website, primarily aimed at young students, of

7998-406: Is that provenience is an artifact's "birthplace", while provenance is its " résumé ". This can be imprecise. Many artifacts originated as trade goods created in one region, but were used and finally deposited in another. Aside from scientific precision, a need for the distinction in these fields has been described thus: Archaeologists ... don't care who owned an object—they are more interested in

8184-648: Is the main working language of the Holy See , serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta . Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels , and

8370-527: Is the one in the Louvre today. Others believe that there was only one true Mona Lisa but are divided as to the two aforementioned fates. At some point in the 16th century, a varnish was applied to the painting. It was kept at the Palace of Fontainebleau until Louis XIV moved it to the Palace of Versailles , where it remained until the French Revolution . In 1797, it went on permanent display at

8556-549: Is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Other examples are Cocoliche , an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires , and Lunfardo . The Rioplatense Spanish dialect of Argentina and Uruguay today has thus been heavily influenced by both standard Italian and Italian regional languages as

8742-509: The Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa). Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example,

8928-991: The La Voce del Popolo ( Croatia ), the Corriere d'Italia (Germany), the L'italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola ( Luxembourg ), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d'incontro (Mexico), the L'Italia del Popolo ( Argentina ), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d'Italia ( Uruguay ), the La Voce d'Italia ( Venezuela ),

9114-463: The American Museum of Natural History treats the terms as synonymous, while scholarly paleontology works make frequent use of provenience in the same precise sense as used in archaeology and paleoanthropology. While exacting details of a find's provenience are primarily of use to scientific researchers, most natural history and archaeology museums also make strenuous efforts to record how

9300-702: The Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy , the Italo-Dalmatian , Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco- Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy , Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in

9486-852: The Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and the municipalities of Santa Tereza and Encantado in Brazil . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia . Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania , although Italian

SECTION 50

#1732764862478

9672-674: The Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese ). Italian is widely spoken in Malta , where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently (see Maltese Italian ). Italian served as Malta's official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition. Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in

9858-773: The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia ), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire . Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states . Those dialects now have considerable variety . As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian . The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and

10044-575: The Lombardy region of northern Italy ." Of Leonardo da Vinci's works , the Mona Lisa is the only portrait whose authenticity has never been seriously questioned, and one of four works—the others being Saint Jerome in the Wilderness , Adoration of the Magi and The Last Supper —whose attribution has avoided controversy. He had begun working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo , the model of

10230-441: The Louvre representative, stated "Leonardo da Vinci was painting, in 1503, the portrait of a Florentine lady by the name of Lisa del Giocondo. About this we are now certain. Unfortunately, we cannot be absolutely certain that this portrait of Lisa del Giocondo is the painting of the Louvre." The catalogue raisonné Leonardo da Vinci (2019) confirms that the painting probably depicts Lisa del Giocondo, with Isabella d'Este being

10416-637: The Louvre . The Mona Lisa began influencing contemporary Florentine painting even before its completion. Raphael , who had been to Leonardo's workshop several times, promptly used elements of the portrait's composition and format in several of his works, such as Young Woman with Unicorn ( c.  1506 ), and Portrait of Maddalena Doni ( c.  1506 ). Later paintings by Raphael, such as La velata (1515–16) and Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione ( c.  1514–15 ), continued to borrow from Leonardo's painting. Zollner states that "None of Leonardo's works would exert more influence upon

10602-581: The Mona Lisa and other works. The Mona Lisa bears a strong resemblance to many Renaissance depictions of the Virgin Mary , who was at that time seen as an ideal for womanhood. The woman sits markedly upright in a "pozzetto" armchair with her arms folded, a sign of her reserved posture. Her gaze is fixed on the observer. The woman appears alive to an unusual extent, which Leonardo achieved by his method of not drawing outlines. The soft blending ( sfumato ) creates an ambiguous mood "mainly in two features:

10788-407: The Mona Lisa as imbued with a sense of mystery and romance . In 1859, Théophile Gautier wrote that the Mona Lisa was a "sphinx of beauty who smiles so mysteriously" and that "Beneath the form expressed one feels a thought that is vague, infinite, inexpressible. One is moved, troubled ... repressed desires, hopes that drive one to despair, stir painfully." Walter Pater 's essay of 1869 described

10974-518: The Mona Lisa , by October 1503. It is believed by some that the Mona Lisa was begun in 1503 or 1504 in Florence. Although the Louvre states that it was "doubtless painted between 1503 and 1506", art historian Martin Kemp says that there are some difficulties in confirming the dates with certainty. Alessandro Vezzosi believes that the painting is characteristic of Leonardo's style in the final years of his life, post-1513. Other academics argue that, given

11160-554: The Placiti Cassinesi from the province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle , probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case. The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after

11346-578: The U.S. Global Change Research Program . Some international academic consortia, such as the Research Data Alliance , have specific groups to tackle issues of provenance. In that case it is the Research Data Provenance Interest Group. Within computer science , informatics uses the term "provenance" to mean the lineage of data , as per data provenance, with research in the last decade extending

SECTION 60

#1732764862478

11532-594: The Uffizi Gallery in Florence . It was exhibited in the Uffizi Gallery for over two weeks and returned to the Louvre on 4 January 1914. Peruggia served six months in prison for the crime and was hailed for his patriotism in Italy. A year after the theft, Saturday Evening Post journalist Karl Decker wrote that he met an alleged accomplice named Eduardo de Valfierno , who claimed to have masterminded

11718-528: The Western Roman Empire's fall in the 5th century. The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri , written in his native Florentine . Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia , to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed

11904-532: The 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture. As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia. From

12090-510: The 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry. Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had probably diverged long before the first written records appeared since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and

12276-408: The 16th century, and an aggressive 1809 cleaning and revarnishing removed some of the uppermost portion of the paint layer, resulting in a washed-out appearance to the face of the figure. Despite the treatments, the Mona Lisa has been well cared for throughout its history, and although the panel's warping caused the curators "some worry", the 2004–05 conservation team was optimistic about the future of

12462-561: The 1880s, about a century after provenance . Outside of academic contexts, it has been used as a synonymous variant spelling of provenance , especially in American English . Any given antiquity may have both a provenience, where it was found, and a provenance, where it has been since it was found. A summary of the distinction is that "provenience is a fixed point, while provenance can be considered an itinerary that an object follows as it moves from hand to hand." Another metaphor

12648-562: The 1970s. It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons : Ticino and Grisons . In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons . Ticino, which includes Lugano , the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant. Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City . Italian

12834-521: The BBC TV programme Fake or Fortune? the provenance of the painting Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil was investigated using a gallery sticker and shipping label on the back. Early provenance can sometimes be indicated by a cartellino , a trompe-l'œil representation of an inscribed label, added to the front of a painting. However, these can be forged, or can fade or be painted over. Auction records are an important resource to assist in researching

13020-417: The Italian dialects has declined in the modern era , as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media from newspapers to radio to television, diglossia is still frequently encountered in Italy and triglossia is not uncommon in emigrant communities among older speakers. Both situations normally involve some degree of code-switching and code-mixing . Notes: Italian has

13206-489: The Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie . Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi ( The Betrothed ) by Alessandro Manzoni , further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno " ( Florence 's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition. After unification,

13392-406: The Louvre filed a complaint. On 28 January 2024, two attackers from the environmentalist group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Retaliation) threw soup at the painting's protective glass, demanding the right to "healthy and sustainable food" and criticizing the contemporary state of agriculture. In the early 21st century, French scientist Pascal Cotte hypothesized a hidden portrait underneath the surface of

13578-603: The Louvre. After the French Revolution, the painting was moved to the Louvre, but spent a brief period in the bedroom of Napoleon (d. 1821) in the Tuileries Palace . The Mona Lisa was not widely known outside the art world, but in the 1860s, a portion of the French intelligentsia began to hail it as a masterwork of Renaissance painting. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871),

13764-574: The Louvre. Former director Henri Loyrette reckoned that "80 percent of the people only want to see the Mona Lisa ." Before the 1962–1963 tour, the painting was assessed for insurance at $ 100 million (equivalent to $ 770 million in 2023), making it, in practice, the most highly-valued painting in the world. The insurance was not purchased; instead, more was spent on security. Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] )

13950-444: The Mediterranean region during late Roman times" says an archaeologist. ... [P]rovenance for an art historian is important to establish ownership, but provenience is interesting to an archaeologist to establish meaning. In this context, the provenance can occasionally be the detailed history of where an object has been since its creation, as in art history contexts – not just since its modern finding. In some cases, such as where there

14136-556: The Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank , humanism , and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from

14322-514: The Netherlands in 1898, often referred to as the " Dutch Manual ". Seamus Ross has argued a case for adapting established principles and theories of archival provenance to the field of modern digital preservation and curation. Provenance is also the title of the journal published by the Society of Georgia Archivists. In the case of books, the study of provenance refers to the study of

14508-829: The OPM Vocabulary and the PROV Ontology make extensive use of metadata models such as Dublin Core and Semantic Web technologies such as the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Current practice is to rely on the W3C PROV data model, OPM's successor. There are several maintained and open-source provenance capture implementation at the operating system level such as CamFlow, Progger for Linux and MS Windows, and SPADE for Linux, MS Windows , and MacOS . Operating system level provenance have gained interest in

14694-644: The Preservations Artisans Guild, were chosen by Mercersburg Academy to research and authenticate the provenance of the Lennon - Ono - Green - Warhol piano before it was put up for sale to fund a Deed of Trust by the Shaool Family to Mercersburg Academy for future student scholarships. Because this piano was part of a famous lawsuit in 2000 and had extensive coverage as the "Lost Lennon Piano", when provenance research done by Lile

14880-420: The back of the panel as a result of crosspieces installed to keep the painting from warping. This was treated on the spot with carbon tetrachloride , and later with an ethylene oxide treatment. In 1985, the spot was again treated with carbon tetrachloride as a preventive measure. On 6 April 2005—following a period of curatorial maintenance, recording, and analysis—the painting was moved to a new location within

15066-407: The best-known source of information on the provenance of the work and identity of the sitter. Leonardo's assistant Salaì , at his death in 1524, owned a portrait which in his personal papers was named la Gioconda , a painting bequeathed to him by Leonardo. That Leonardo painted such a work, and its date, were confirmed in 2005 when a scholar at Heidelberg University discovered a marginal note in

15252-698: The better-known provenance representation systems that preceded it, such as the Proof Markup Language and the Open Provenance Model. Interoperability is a design goal of most recent computer science provenance theories and models, for example the Open Provenance Model (OPM) 2008 generation workshop aimed at "establishing inter-operability of systems" through information exchange agreements. Data models and serialisation formats for delivering provenance information typically reuse existing metadata models where possible to enable this. Both

15438-427: The birth of their second son, Andrea. The Italian name for the painting, La Gioconda , means 'jocund' ('happy' or 'jovial') or, literally, 'the jocund one', a pun on the feminine form of Lisa's married name, Giocondo. In French, the title La Joconde has the same meaning. Vasari's account of the Mona Lisa comes from his biography of Leonardo published in 1550, 31 years after the artist's death. It has long been

15624-609: The books owned by a writer may help to show which works influenced him or her. Many provenance studies are historically focused, and concentrated on books owned by writers, politicians and public figures. The recent ownership of books is studied, however, as is evidence of how ordinary or anonymous readers have interacted with books. Provenance can be studied both by examining the books themselves, for instance looking at inscriptions, marginalia , bookplates , book rhymes , and bindings, and by reference to external sources of information such as auction catalogues. Provenance for pianos

15810-444: The case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ( Late Middle Ages ) gave its language weight, although Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside

15996-653: The colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian

16182-650: The conceptual model of causality and relation to include processes that act on data and agents that are responsible for those processes. See, for example, the proceedings of the International Provenance Annotation Workshop (IPAW) and Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP). Semantic web standards bodies, including the World Wide Web Consortium in 2014, have ratified a standard data model for provenance representation known as PROV which draws from many of

16368-418: The context of an object within the community of its (mostly original) users. ... [W]e are interested in why a Roman coin turned up in a shipwreck 400 years after it was made; while art historians don't really care, since they can generally figure out what mint a coin came from by the information stamped on its surface. "It's a Roman coin, what else do we need to know?" says an art historian; "The shipping trade in

16554-522: The context of discussions about the restitution of cultural objects in museum collections of colonial origin , the AfricaMuseum in Belgium started to publicly present information about such objects in its permanent exhibition in 2021. The objective of provenance research is to produce a complete list of owners (together, where possible, with the supporting documentary proof) from when the painting

16740-630: The corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eyes". The depiction of the sitter in three-quarter profile is similar to late 15th-century works by Lorenzo di Credi and Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere . Zöllner notes that the sitter's general position can be traced back to Flemish models and that "in particular the vertical slices of columns at both sides of the panel had precedents in Flemish portraiture." Woods-Marsden cites Hans Memling 's portrait of Benedetto Portinari (1487) or Italian imitations such as Sebastiano Mainardi's pendant portraits for

16926-573: The country (some 0.42% of the total population). Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of

17112-518: The country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language. The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools. The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania, due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to

17298-446: The country. A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s. Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation . Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara , still has several Italian schools, established during

17484-525: The country. The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians ) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population). Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) in

17670-464: The design and fashion industries, in some sports such as football and especially in culinary terms. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular —other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called " Italian dialects ", a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean "dialects of Italian". The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date

17856-588: The diffusion of Italian television in the country. Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period , Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya. Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule , Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi , who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of

18042-478: The educated gentlemen was to make the Grand Tour , visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was expected that the visitor would learn at least some Italian, understood as language based on Florentine. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until

18228-462: The establishment of Italian, and as such are sister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered " historical language minorities ", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by

18414-471: The evolution of the genre than the Mona Lisa . It became the definitive example of the Renaissance portrait and perhaps for this reason is seen not just as the likeness of a real person, but also as the embodiment of an ideal." Where earlier critics such as Vasari in the 16th century and André Félibien in the 17th praised the picture for its realism , by the mid-19th century, writers began to regard

18600-400: The eyebrows in detail. In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte announced that his ultra-high resolution scans of the painting provide evidence that Mona Lisa was originally painted with eyelashes and eyebrows, but that these had gradually disappeared over time, perhaps as a result of overcleaning. Cotte discovered that the painting had been reworked several times, with changes made to the size of

18786-614: The face and the direction of gaze. He also found that in one layer the subject was depicted wearing numerous hairpins and a headdress adorned with pearls which was later scrubbed out and overpainted. There has been much speculation regarding the painting's model and landscape. For example, Leonardo probably painted his model faithfully since her beauty is not seen as being among the best, "even when measured by late quattrocento (15th century) or even twenty-first century standards." Some historians in Eastern art, such as Yukio Yashiro , argue that

18972-433: The fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the Kingdom of Naples , or Austria in

19158-476: The free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language. According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs , every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in

19344-435: The gift of a piano, then experts are usually hired to authenticate the piano's provenance. Piano provenance has emerged as a field of study with experts having college degrees in some specialty connected to the piano or to art combined with professional training and experience in the field. Most experts belong to some form of association. For example, Karen Earle Lile niece of Tony Terran and Kendall Ross Bean , members of

19530-403: The glass enclosure. In both cases, the painting was undamaged. On 29 May 2022, a male activist, disguised as a woman in a wheelchair, threw cake at the protective glass covering the painting in an apparent attempt to raise awareness for climate change . The painting was not damaged. The man was arrested and placed in psychiatric care in the police headquarters. An investigation was opened after

19716-578: The historical documentation, Leonardo would have painted the work from 1513. According to Vasari, "after he had lingered over it four years, [he] left it unfinished". In 1516, Leonardo was invited by King Francis I to work at the Clos Lucé near the Château d'Amboise ; it is believed that he took the Mona Lisa with him and continued to work on it after he moved to France. Art historian Carmen C. Bambach has concluded that Leonardo probably continued refining

19902-489: The island of Corsica (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia , which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians , would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere ). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia , as well as

20088-440: The items in their collections were acquired. These records are often of use in helping to establish a chain of provenance. Scientific research is generally held to be of good provenance when it is documented in detail sufficient to allow reproducibility . Scientific workflow systems assist scientists and programmers with tracking their data through all transformations, analyses, and interpretations. Data sets are reliable when

20274-569: The landscape and emphasizing the mysterious nature of the painting. The bridge in the background was identified by Silvano Vincenti as the four-arched Romito di Laterina bridge from Etruscan - Roman times near Laterina , Arezzo over the Arno river . Other bridges with similar arches suggested as possible locations had more arches. Some observers find similarities with the Azzone Visconti Bridge . Mona Lisa has no clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes, although Vasari describes

20460-506: The landscape in the background of the picture was influenced by Chinese paintings , but this thesis has been contested for lack of clear evidence. Research in 2003 by Professor Margaret Livingstone of Harvard University said that Mona Lisa's smile disappears when observed with direct vision, known as foveal . Because of the way the human eye processes visual information, it is less suited to pick up shadows directly; however, peripheral vision can pick up shadows well. Research in 2008 by

20646-577: The language has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants. During the Middle Ages , the established written language in Europe was Latin, although the great majority of people were illiterate, and only few were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula , as in most of Europe, most would instead speak

20832-640: The language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela , Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers. In Uruguay , people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of

21018-498: The late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton , for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. Within the Catholic Church , Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in

21204-534: The late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil, where Talian

21390-514: The law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica ) is closely related to medieval Tuscan , from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata . The most prevalent were substrata (the language of

21576-622: The legal term chain of custody . For museums and the art trade , in addition to helping establish the authorship and authenticity of an object, provenance has become increasingly important in helping establish the moral and legal validity of a chain of custody, given the increasing amount of looted art . These issues first became a major concern regarding works that had changed hands in Nazi-controlled areas in Europe before and during World War II. Many museums began compiling pro-active registers of such works and their history. Recently

21762-528: The more general sense can be of importance in archaeology. Fakes are not unknown, and finds are sometimes removed from the context in which they were found without documentation, reducing their value to science. Even when apparently discovered in situ , archaeological finds are treated with caution. The provenience of a find may not be properly represented by the context in which it was found, e.g. due to stratigraphic layers being disturbed by erosion, earthquakes, or ancient reconstruction or other disturbance at

21948-413: The most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, [and] the most parodied work of art in the world." The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism. The painting has been traditionally considered to depict the Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo . It is painted in oil on

22134-449: The museum had closed. Peruggia was an Italian patriot who believed that Leonardo's painting should have been returned to an Italian museum. Peruggia may have been motivated by an associate whose copies of the original would significantly rise in value after the painting's theft. After having kept the Mona Lisa in his apartment for two years, Peruggia grew impatient and was caught when he attempted to sell it to Giovanni Poggi , director of

22320-416: The museum's Salle des États. It is displayed in a purpose-built, climate-controlled enclosure behind bulletproof glass. Since 2005, the painting has been illuminated by an LED lamp , and a new 20-watt LED lamp that was specially designed for this painting was installed in 2013. The lamp has a Colour Rendering Index of up to 98 and minimizes infrared and ultraviolet radiation, which could otherwise degrade

22506-412: The nation was unified in 1861. Italian is a Romance language , a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan , especially its Florentine dialect , and is, therefore, an Italo-Dalmatian language , a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian . According to Ethnologue , lexical similarity

22692-408: The number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and Italian, as the dominant language, spread. Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula , as well as the prestige variety used on

22878-654: The only plausible alternative. Scholars have developed several alternative views , arguing that Lisa del Giocondo was the subject of a different portrait, and identifying at least four other paintings referred to by Vasari as the Mona Lisa . Several other people have been proposed as the subject of the painting, including Isabella of Aragon , Cecilia Gallerani , Costanza d'Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla , Pacifica Brandano/Brandino, Isabella Gualanda, Caterina Sforza , Bianca Giovanna Sforza , Salaì, and even Leonardo himself. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud theorized that Leonardo imparted an approving smile from his mother, Caterina, onto

23064-630: The openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà , annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go"). There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of

23250-584: The original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most probably simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either. Throughout Italy, regional varieties of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian , are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors:

23436-458: The other hand, almost everyone still speaks the Corsican idiom , which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it

23622-513: The ownership of individual copies of books. It is usually extended to include the study of the circumstances in which individual copies of books have changed ownership, and of evidence left in books that shows how readers interacted with them. Provenance studies may shed light on the books themselves, providing evidence of the role particular titles have played in social, intellectual and literary history. Such studies may also add to our knowledge of particular owners of books. For instance, looking at

23808-574: The painting , which is known in English as Mona Lisa , is based on the presumption that it depicts Lisa del Giocondo , although her likeness is uncertain. Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari wrote that " Leonardo undertook to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife." Monna in Italian is a polite form of address originating as ma donna —similar to Ma'am , Madam , or my lady in English. This became madonna , and its contraction monna . The title of

23994-485: The painting from any further attacks. Subsequently, on 21 April 1974, while the painting was on display at the Tokyo National Museum , a woman sprayed it with red paint as a protest against that museum's failure to provide access for disabled people. On 2 August 2009, a Russian woman, distraught over being denied French citizenship, threw a ceramic teacup purchased at the Louvre; the vessel shattered against

24180-425: The painting has been temporarily moved to accommodate renovations to the Louvre on three occasions: between 1992 and 1995, from 2001 to 2005, and again in 2019. A new queuing system introduced in 2019 reduces the amount of time museum visitors have to wait in line to see the painting. After going through the queue, a group has about 30 seconds to see the painting. On 30 December 1956, Bolivian Ugo Ungaza Villegas threw

24366-562: The painting have been trimmed at least once in its history to fit the picture into various frames, but no part of the original paint layer has been trimmed. The first and most extensive recorded cleaning, revarnishing, and touch-up of the Mona Lisa was an 1809 wash and revarnishing undertaken by Jean-Marie Hooghstoel, who was responsible for the restoration of paintings for the galleries of the Musée Napoléon . The work involved cleaning with spirits, touch-ups of colour, and revarnishing

24552-530: The painting was moved from the Louvre to the Brest Arsenal . In 1911, the painting was still not popular among the lay-public. On 21 August 1911, the painting was stolen from the Louvre. The painting was first reported missing the next day by painter Louis Béroud . After some confusion as to whether the painting was being photographed somewhere, the Louvre was closed for a week for investigation. French poet Guillaume Apollinaire came under suspicion and

24738-412: The painting's overwhelming stature, Dadaists and Surrealists often produce modifications and caricatures . In 1883, Le rire, an image of a Mona Lisa smoking a pipe, by Sapeck (Eugène Bataille), was shown at the " Incoherents " show in Paris. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp , one of the most influential modern artists, created L.H.O.O.Q. , a Mona Lisa parody made by adorning a cheap reproduction with

24924-421: The painting's visit to the United States in 1963. The French urban artist known pseudonymously as Invader has created versions of the Mona Lisa on city walls in Paris and Tokyo using a mosaic style. A 2014 New Yorker magazine cartoon parodies the supposed enigma of the Mona Lisa smile in an animation showing progressively more maniacal smiles. Today, the Mona Lisa is considered the most famous painting in

25110-531: The painting, though traditionally spelled Mona in English, is spelled in Italian as Monna Lisa ( mona being a vulgarity in Italian), but this is rare in English. Lisa del Giocondo was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany , and the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The painting is thought to have been commissioned for their new home, and to celebrate

25296-467: The painting. Both Vasari and Gian Paolo Lomazzo describe the subject as smiling, unlike the subject in Cotte's supposed portrait. In 2020, Cotte published a study alleging that the painting has an underdrawing , transferred from a preparatory drawing via the spolvero technique. The Mona Lisa has survived for more than 500 years, and an international commission convened in 1952 noted that "the picture

25482-443: The painting. He analysed the painting in the Louvre with reflective light technology beginning in 2004, and produced circumstantial evidence for his theory. Cotte admits that his investigation was carried out only in support of his hypotheses and should not be considered as definitive proof. The underlying portrait appears to be of a model looking to the side, and lacks flanking columns, but does not fit with historical descriptions of

25668-406: The painting. In 1906, Louvre restorer Eugène Denizard performed watercolour retouches on areas of the paint layer disturbed by the crack in the panel. Denizard also retouched the edges of the picture with varnish to mask areas that had been covered initially by an older frame. In 1913, when the painting was recovered after its theft, Denizard was again called upon to work on the Mona Lisa . Denizard

25854-482: The painting. The renovation of the gallery where the painting now resides was financed by the Japanese broadcaster Nippon Television . As of 2019, about 10.2 million people view the painting at the Louvre each year. On the 500th anniversary of the master's death, the Louvre held the largest ever single exhibit of Leonardo's works from 24 October 2019 to 24 February 2020. The Mona Lisa was not included because it

26040-429: The piano. For a piano, provenance can be established by starting with the authentication of the brand of manufacture and serial number, which will usually identify age. Then bills of sale, tuning records, bills of lading, concert programs that identify a piano by serial number, letters, famous signatures inside or on the outside of a piano, statements under oath in a court of law and photographs can all help authenticate

26226-441: The picture for an exhibit to honour the anniversary of Leonardo's 500th birthday, the Mona Lisa was fitted in 1951 with a flexible oak frame with beech crosspieces . This flexible frame, which is used in addition to the decorative frame, exerts pressure on the panel to keep it from warping further. In 1970, the beech crosspieces were switched to maple after it was found that the beechwood had been infested with insects. In 2004–05,

26412-406: The population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II , contributed to

26598-435: The potential of improving with age , the issue of provenance has a large bearing on the assessment of the contents of a bottle, both in terms of quality and the risk of wine fraud . A documented history of wine cellar conditions is valuable in estimating the quality of an older vintage due to the fragile nature of wine. Recent technology developments have aided collectors in assessing the temperature and humidity history of

26784-488: The processes used to create them are reproducible and analyzable for defects. Security researchers are interested in data provenance because it can analyze suspicious data and make large opaque systems transparent. Current initiatives to effectively manage, share, and reuse ecological data are indicative of the increasing importance of data provenance. Examples of these initiatives are National Science Foundation Datanet projects, DataONE and Data Conservancy, as well as

26970-469: The proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left. Although use of

27156-528: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to

27342-564: The provenance is uncertain, because of gaps in the recorded chain of custody, will be considered to be severely compromised. The principles of archival provenance were developed in the 19th century by both French and Prussian archivists, and gained widespread acceptance on the basis of their formulation in the Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives by Dutch state archivists Samuel Muller, J. A. Feith, and R. Fruin, published in

27528-461: The provenance of paintings. If a painting has been in private hands for an extended period and on display in a stately home , it may be recorded in an inventory – for example, the Lumley inventory . The painting may also have been noticed by a visitor who subsequently wrote about it. It may have been mentioned in a will or a diary. Where the painting has been bought from a dealer, or changed hands in

27714-407: The provenience is recorded in three dimensions on a site grid with great precision, and may also be recorded on video to provide additional proof and context. In older work, often undertaken by amateurs, only the general site or approximate area may be known, especially when an artifact was found outside a professional excavation and its specific position not recorded. The term provenience appeared in

27900-415: The publication of Agnolo Monosini 's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612. An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed

28086-643: The publication of many cultural depictions such as the 1915 opera Mona Lisa , two early 1930s films ( The Theft of the Mona Lisa and Arsène Lupin ), and the song " Mona Lisa " recorded by Nat King Cole —one of the most successful songs of the 1950s. The Mona Lisa is one of the most valuable paintings in the world. It holds the Guinness World Record for the highest known painting insurance valuation in history at US$ 100 million in 1962, equivalent to $ 1 billion as of 2023. The title of

28272-487: The referendum that allowed France to annex Savoy and Nice, and a group of his followers (among the Italian Savoyards ) took refuge in Italy in the following years. Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1769 after the Treaty of Versailles . Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859. Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the " Corsican Italians " within Italy when Rome

28458-495: The same concerns have come to prominence for works of African art , often exported illegally, and antiquities from many parts of the world, but currently especially in Iraq , and then Syria . In archaeology and paleontology , the derived term provenience is used with a related but very particular meaning, to refer to the location (in modern research, recorded precisely in three dimensions) where an artifact or other ancient item

28644-419: The security community notably to develop novel intrusion detection techniques. Other implementations exist for specific programming and scripting languages, such as RDataTracker for R , and NoWorkflow for Python . In the geologic use of the term, provenance instead refers to the origin or source area of particles within a rock, most commonly in sedimentary rocks . It does not refer to the circumstances of

28830-401: The sequences of its formal ownership, custody and places of storage. The practice has a particular value in helping authenticate objects. Comparative techniques, expert opinions and the results of scientific tests may also be used to these ends, but establishing provenance is essentially a matter of documentation . The term dates to the 1780s in English. Provenance is conceptually comparable to

29016-489: The sitter as "older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in the deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her." By the early 20th century, some critics started to feel the painting had become a repository for subjective exegeses and theories. Upon the painting's theft in 1911, Renaissance historian Bernard Berenson admitted that it had "simply become an incubus, and [he]

29202-475: The sketch may be after another Leonardo portrait of the same subject. The record of an October 1517 visit by Louis d'Aragon states that the Mona Lisa was executed for the deceased Giuliano de' Medici , Leonardo's steward at Belvedere, Vienna , between 1513 and 1516—but this was likely an error. According to Vasari, the painting was created for the model's husband, Francesco del Giocondo. A number of experts have argued that Leonardo made two versions (because of

29388-437: The smartphone user. This takes the trust issue out of the hands of the owner and gives it to a third party for verification. Archaeology and anthropology researchers use provenience to refer to the exact location or find spot of an artifact , a bone or other remains, a soil sample, or a feature within an ancient site, whereas provenance covers an object's complete documented history. Ideally, in modern excavations,

29574-473: The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists —individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves. The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the 15th century,

29760-481: The temperature is maintained between 18 °C (64 °F) and 21 °C (70 °F). To compensate for fluctuations in relative humidity, the case is supplemented with a bed of silica gel treated to provide 55% relative humidity. Because the Mona Lisa ' s poplar support expands and contracts with changes in humidity, the picture has experienced some warping. In response to warping and swelling experienced during its storage during World War II, and to prepare

29946-711: The theft. Forger Yves Chaudron was to have created six copies of the painting to sell in the US while concealing the location of the original. Decker published this account of the theft in 1932. During World War II , it was again removed from the Louvre and taken first to the Château d'Amboise, then to the Loc-Dieu Abbey and Château de Chambord , then finally to the Musée Ingres in Montauban . In recent decades,

30132-427: The thickness of the panel. This intervention was skilfully executed, and successfully stabilized the crack. Sometime between 1888 and 1905, or perhaps during the picture's theft, the upper brace fell out. A later restorer glued and lined the resulting socket and crack with cloth. The picture is kept under strict, climate-controlled conditions in its bulletproof glass case. The humidity is maintained at 50% ±10%, and

30318-469: The title Divina , were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and

30504-542: The total population of the country. In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language. The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L'Osservatore Romano ( Vatican City ), the L'Informazione di San Marino ( San Marino ), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino ( Switzerland ),

30690-699: The uncertainty concerning its dating and commissioner, as well as its fate following Leonardo's death in 1519, and the difference of details in Raphael's sketch—which may be explained by the possibility that he made the sketch from memory). The hypothetical first portrait, displaying prominent columns, would have been commissioned by Giocondo c.  1503 , and left unfinished in Leonardo's pupil and assistant Salaì's possession until his death in 1524. The second, commissioned by Giuliano de' Medici c.  1513 , would have been sold by Salaì to Francis I in 1518 and

30876-439: The use of a loggia , which has the effect of mediating between the sitter and the distant landscape, a feature missing from Leonardo's earlier portrait of Ginevra de' Benci . The painting was one of the first Italian portraits to depict the sitter in front of an imaginary landscape, although some scholars favour a realistic description, and Leonardo was one of the first painters to use aerial perspective . The enigmatic woman

31062-481: The value of a painting, and establishing provenance may help confirm the date, artist and, especially for portraits, the subject of a painting. It may confirm whether a painting is genuinely of the period it seems to date from. The provenance of paintings can help resolve ownership disputes. For example, provenance between 1933 and 1945 can determine whether a painting was looted by the Nazis . Many galleries are putting

31248-408: The wine which are two key components in establishing perfect provenance. For example, there are devices available that rest inside the wood case and can be read through the wood by waving a smartphone equipped with a simple app. These devices track the conditions the case has been exposed to for the duration of the battery life, which can be as long as 15 years, and sends a graph and high/low readings to

31434-591: The work of Vermeer . Jacques sometimes produced a certificate with his forgeries, stating that a work was created by his father. John Drewe was able to pass off as genuine paintings, a large number of forgeries that would have easily been recognised as such by scientific examination. He established an impressive, but false provenance. Because of this, galleries and dealers accepted the paintings as genuine. He created this false provenance by forging letters and other documents, including false entries in earlier exhibition catalogues. Sometimes provenance can be as simple as

31620-573: The work until 1516 or 1517. Leonardo's right hand was paralytic c.  1517 , which may indicate why he left the Mona Lisa unfinished. Circa 1505, Raphael executed a pen-and-ink sketch, in which the columns flanking the subject are more apparent. Experts universally agree that it is based on Leonardo's portrait. Other later copies of the Mona Lisa , such as those in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design and The Walters Art Museum , also display large flanking columns. As

31806-413: The work. At some point, the Mona Lisa was removed from its original frame. The unconstrained poplar panel warped freely with changes in humidity, and as a result, a crack developed near the top of the panel, extending down to the hairline of the figure. In the mid-18th century to early 19th century, two butterfly-shaped walnut braces were inserted into the back of the panel to a depth of about one third

31992-659: The working languages of the Council of Europe . It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union (13% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom ) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian

32178-459: The world, a destination painting , but until the 20th century, it was one among many highly regarded artworks. Once part of King Francis I of France 's collection, the Mona Lisa was among the first artworks to be exhibited in the Louvre, which became a national museum after the French Revolution. Leonardo began to be revered as a genius, and the painting's popularity grew in the mid-19th century when French intelligentsia praised it as mysterious and

32364-515: The world. The 300,000th Steinway piano that was presented to President Franklin D. Roosevelt by Theodore Steinway, on behalf of the Steinway family is on display in the White House. It is one of many pianos with a provenance that have extraordinary value because of art, sculpture or design incorporated into the cabinet. It has legs carved into golden eagles and figures painted on the body of

32550-561: Was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent , only

32736-525: Was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy , but King Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it. Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican , which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan. Francization occurred in Nice case, and caused a near-disappearance of the Italian language as many of the Italian speakers in these areas migrated to Italy. In Corsica, on

32922-413: Was arrested and imprisoned. Apollinaire implicated his friend Pablo Picasso , who was brought in for questioning. Both were later exonerated. The real culprit was Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia , who had helped construct the painting's glass case. He carried out the theft by entering the building during regular hours, hiding in a broom closet, and walking out with the painting hidden under his coat after

33108-491: Was claimed to have been reproduced in "300 paintings and 2,000 advertisements". The Mona Lisa was regarded as "just another Leonardo until early last century, when the scandal of the painting's theft from the Louvre and subsequent return kept a spotlight on it over several years." From December 1962 to March 1963, the French government lent it to the United States to be displayed in New York City and Washington, D.C. It

33294-418: Was commissioned or in the artist's studio through to the present time. In practice, there are likely to be gaps in the list and documents that are missing or lost. The documented provenance should also list when the painting has been part of an exhibition and a bibliography of when it has been discussed, or illustrated in print. Where the research is proceeding backwards, to discover the previous provenance of

33480-409: Was directed to clean the picture without solvent and to lightly touch up several scratches on the painting with watercolour. In 1952, the varnish layer over the background in the painting was evened out. After the second 1956 attack, restorer Jean-Gabriel Goulinat was directed to touch up the damage to Mona Lisa ' s left elbow with watercolour. In 1977, a new insect infestation was discovered in

33666-402: Was found. Provenance covers an object's complete documented history. An artifact may thus have both a provenience and a provenance. The provenance of works of fine art , antiques and antiquities is of great importance, especially to their owner. There are a number of reasons why painting provenance is important, which mostly also apply to other types of fine art. A good provenance increases

33852-453: Was glad to be rid of her." Jean Metzinger 's Le goûter (Tea Time) was exhibited at the 1911 Salon d'Automne and was sarcastically described as "la Joconde à la cuiller" (Mona Lisa with a spoon) by art critic Louis Vauxcelles on the front page of Gil Blas . André Salmon subsequently described the painting as "The Mona Lisa of Cubism". The avant-garde art world has made note of the Mona Lisa ' s undeniable popularity. Because of

34038-443: Was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro , an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of

34224-658: Was replaced by the French. This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860) . It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania ), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia ), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by

34410-672: Was revealed by the Alex Cooper Auctioneers to the public, the provenance became the subject of dozens of newspapers and magazines that picked up the story. In the case of sculpture or art that are incorporated into the piano's cabinet, experts might be come from the field of art valuation and belong to an appraiser society such as the American Society of Appraisers or the International Society of Appraisers. In transactions of old wine with

34596-582: Was shipped on the new ocean liner SS France . In New York, an estimated 1.7 million people queued "in order to cast a glance at the Mona Lisa for 20 seconds or so." While exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the painting was nearly drenched in water because of a faulty sprinkler, but the painting's bullet-proof glass case protected it. In 1974, the painting was exhibited in Tokyo and Moscow. In 2014, 9.3 million people visited

#477522