9 quotes found
"To you, a prostitute is some kind of beautiful object. You respect her as you do the Mona Lisa, in front of whom you also would not make an obscene gesture. But in so doing, you think nothing of depriving thousands of women of their souls and relegating them to an existence in an art gallery. As if we consort with them so artistically!"
"Florence Thompson, the Mona Lisa of the 1930s, a migrant mother whose picture haunted the nation."
"The genius of Leonardo as a painter came through unfolding the mystery of life... "Look at the grace and sweetness of men and women in the street," he wrote... The whole world was full of a mystery to him, which his work reflected. The smile of consciousness, pregnant of that which is beyond, illumines the expression of Mona Lisa."
"Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you You're so like the lady with the mystic smile Is it only 'cause you're lonely they have blamed you? For that Mona Lisa strangeness in your smile?"
"Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep They just lie there, and they die there Are you warm? Are you real, Mona Lisa? Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?"
"Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer."
"The Mona Lisa, to me, is the greatest emotional painting ever done. The way the smile flickers makes it a work of both art and science, because Leonardo understood optics, and the muscles of the lips, and how light strikes the eye — all of it goes into making the Mona Lisa's smile so mysterious and elusive."
"[S]ince art is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas through form, the reproduction of the form only reinforces the concept. It is the idea that is being reproduced. Anyone who understands the work of art owns it. We all own the Mona Lisa."
"Prese Lionardo a fare per Francesco del Giocondo il ritratto di mona Lisa sua moglie."