Listening to Art

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Listening to Art, by William Denton.

Volume twelve, number eight: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.

Hello, and welcome to Listening to Art. I’m William Denton.

We first heard this recording in volume five number six, where I said: “This recording is different from others because it is the only one where I had to line up to see the painting.” That was technically true for paintings, but not for all works: as described in the last issue, it had been necessary the year before to line up to get into Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms. However, there is nothing incorrect with the rest of my remarks:

In fact, I had to line up twice: first to enter the room where the painting hangs, and then to get close to it….

When I visited the Louvre in Paris, Mona Lisa was not in its usual room. Because of some construction it had been moved to the Richelieu wing and put in the Medici Gallery. This room holds two dozen large paintings by Peter Paul Rubens that depict scenes from the life of Marie de’ Medici, the wife of Henry IV and mother of Louis XIII.

It took four minutes to get through the line outside that room. I happened to be on the right floor already, which was lucky, because people were also being made to wait on the floor below before walking up the inactive escalator to join the queue. Once we got to the entrance of the Medici Gallery we entered into another snaking line that took about four-and–half minutes to get through….

Finally, at the end of the queue, there was a small area where one could stand briefly to take a photo a couple of meters away from the painting, which is shielded by bullet-proof glass. The last thirty seconds or so of the recording were done there.

This is a painting, oil on wood, 53 cm wide by 77 cm high.

Now let’s listen to Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, recorded at the Louvre, in Paris, on 18 July 2019.

That was Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. I hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as I did.

For more information and links to things I’ve mentioned, please visit listeningtoart.org.

Listening to Art is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Bibliography

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