Mona Leo

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Lillian Feldman Schwartz

1988

10"x8"

Highlights

Description

International notoriety came to Lillian Schwartz after she announced her theory that the _Mona Lisa _was a disguised self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. Mona Leo is a collage that demonstrates the thinking behind her argument by suturing one half of the Mona Lisa (1503) with half of a late self-portrait. Schwartz’s work invites viewers to note similarities in the mouth, nose, and brow, and to conclude that da Vinci used himself as a model for his most famous painting. The distances between the inner corners of their eyes, which Schwartz described as one of the most individual characteristics of a face, are within 2 percent of one another.

Made on the early photo-editing software Pico while Schwartz was in residence at Bell Labs, the collage received widespread public attention. Schwartz was interviewed by CBS Evening News, and researchers called for da Vinci’s body to be exhumed and measured against the Mona Lisa’s proportions. Schwartz produced a variety of other morphs and merges between _Mona Lisa _and self-portraits of da Vinci using the program to further substantiate her claim.