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Images: Museo Nacional del Prado
Conservators at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, discovered something fantastic when they cleaned up their replica copy of the Mona Lisa.
At first, they thought their Mona Lisa was made after Leonardo da Vinci's death, but it turned out the painting was made side by side by Leonardo's apprentice, and it revealed astonishing new details:
The final traces of overpaint are now being removed by Prado conservators, revealing the fine details of the delicate Tuscan landscape, which mirrors the background of Leonardo’s masterpiece. Darkened varnish is also being painstakingly stripped away from the face of the Mona Lisa, giving a much more vivid impression of her enticing eyes and enigmatic smile.
In the Louvre’s original, which will not be cleaned in the foreseeable future, Lisa’s face is obscured by old, cracked varnish, making her appear almost middle aged. In the Prado copy we see her as she would have looked at the time—as a radiant young woman in her early 20s.
The Art Newspaper has the story: Link
For the ultimate retro look, get Leonardo da Vinci’s handbag. It’s a modern leather purse from the fashion house Ghrardini that is based on a design sketched by Leonardo in the Codex Atlanticus, a collection of his notes and drawings. At the link, you can watch a video of an artisan assembling one.
Link -via American Digest | Photo: Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci
Brian Stuckey spent 3 months drawing The Last Breakfast, where all your favorite breakfast mascots get together for one last breakfast:
Pop from the Rice Krispies as Judas Iscariot? I shoulda known!
Embiggen at Brian’s website: Link | Etsy Store
Laura Bell of Roscommon, Michigan, collected laundry dryer lint and used it to make an enormous version of Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper:
Bell says she needed about 800 hours to do enough laundry to get the lint, and 200 hours to recreate the mural. She bought towels of the colors she wanted and laundered them separately to get the right shades of lint.
The 14-foot wide painting was just bought by the Ripley’s Believe It or Not company.
Link via Theresa Coleman’s Facebook page | Photo: Ripley’s
A Queen’s University Classics professor may have found a reference that Dan Brown missed. Ross Kilpatrick believes the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, incorporates images inspired by the Roman poet Horace and Florentine poet Petrarch. The technique of taking a passage from literature and incorporating it into a work of art is known as ‘invention’ and was used by many Renaissance artists.
“The composition of the Mona Lisa is striking. Why does Leonardo have an attractive woman sitting on a balcony, while in the background there is an entirely different world that is vast and barren?” says Dr. Kilpatrick. “What is the artist trying to say?”
Dr. Kilpatrick believes Leonardo is alluding to Horace’s Ode 1. 22 (Integer vitae) and two sonnets by Petrarch (Canzoniere CXLV, CLIX). Like the Mona Lisa, those three poems celebrate a devotion to a smiling young woman, with vows to love and follow the woman anywhere in the world, from damp mountains to arid deserts. The regions mentioned by Horace and Petrarch are similar to the background of the Mona Lisa.
Both poets were read when Leonardo painted the picture in the early 1500s. Leonardo was familiar with the works of Petrarch and Horace, and the bridge seen in the background of the Mona Lisa has been identified as the same one from Petrarch’s hometown of Arezzo.
Leonardo Da Vinci is primarily associated with his artistic creations and his oddly inspired mechanical contraptions. However many people are unaware of his astronomical endeavors, more importantly his discovery of earthshine.
Already during the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci had correctly gathered enough information and drawings to explain the nature of earthshine. In Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester, published in the early 16th century, he states his belief that the Moon possessed an atmosphere and oceans, and that it was a fine reflector of light because it was covered with so much water. He also speculated about how storms on Earth could cause the earthshine to become brighter or dimmer, which is indeed observable with modern instrumentation.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.
Obesity experts at Cornell University say that depictions of the Last Supper, such as that of Leonardo da Vinci (above), have shown increasingly larger meal portions for the past thousand years:
They found the main courses, bread and plates put before Jesus and his disciples have progressively grown by up to two-thirds.
This, they say, is art imitating life.
Professor Brian Wansink, who, with his brother Craig, led the research, published in the International Journal of Obesity, said: “The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food.
Link | Image: Art Renewal Center
Well, it’s actually structured more like a cover letter, but this document served as a resume when da Vinci was 30 and trying to get a job with the Duke of Milan. Here’s the first part:
Most Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled contrivers of instruments of war, and that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Excellency, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.
1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy.
2. I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining to such expeditions
Under the direction of artist Katy Webster, children painted an enormous copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa at a shopping mall in Wales:
Dozens of adults from community groups and youngsters from Wrexham schools coloured 82 vinyl tiles to make the paint-by-numbers portrait.
It is on show at Eagles Meadow, and will be used to raise money for the children’s hospice charity Hope House.
At 17.5m across, and covering 240 sqm, it is some 50 times the original.
Video at the link (preceded by a commercial).
Link via GearFuse | Image: My Modern MET
Five artists from the art collective Cube Works in Toronto recreated Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper out of 4,050 cubes, in all measuring 8.5 by 17 feet. The work was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records and sold to a collector in Florida.
Link via Popped Culture | Artists’ Website (Warning: self-starting audio)
Charlie Jane Anders of the science fiction blog io9 has assembled a gallery of some of the best photoshop pieces that blend Star Wars and Western religious art. Among Anders’ sources are the photoshop contests of Worth 1000 and Something Awful. The image above is derivative of Leonardo da Vinci’s Litta Madonna.
The Toy Zone has pictures and descriptions of fifteen weapons or defensive systems that historians have found sketched in the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. These include a tank, cluster munitions, and mobile walls. The picture above is of a pivoting radial barrage canon found in the Codex Atlanticus.
Did Leonardo da Vinci paint a nude version of the Mona Lisa? Maybe so, according to a newly revealed painting, hidden for a century within the walls of a private library:
The lady in the portrait does not exactly resemble the original Mona Lisa, but there is little doubt it has parallels with the painting hanging at the Louvre museum in Paris.
"The frontal look, the position of the hands, the spatial conception of the landscape, with columns at the sides, show a clear link with the Mona Lisa’s iconographic theme," Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the museum, told Discovery News.
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Artist Saimir Strati creates enormous mosaics out of nails, corks, and toothpicks. Here is a picture of him at work on his 2006 portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. It’s made entirely out of nails. You can see a full gallery of high-resolution photographs of his work at the link.
Link via Bits & Pieces
