THE PRIVATE LIFE OF MONA LISA

by Pierre La Mure ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 1976

Well, yes, this fictionalized biography is about the supposed model for the famous portrait but it has just as much to do with the flamboyant and far more interesting events and characters of late 15th-century Italy. According to an account, which La Mute quotes, set down in 1517 when Leonardo da Vinci was 65, a ""certain Florentine lady"" had been ""painted from life at the urgent request of the Magnificent Guiliano de Medici."" From this La Mure reconstructs what we are to assume was the life of a typical upper-class society matron from her birth into a family of wool merchants, her connection with the Medicis, her hastily arranged marriage to a kindly older man (because of a youthful indiscretion with the patron of the portrait) to her untimely (but not unusual) death at 37. How could her little ups and downs be anything but tedium itself, however, compared with the capably rendered bombast of Savonarola, the treachery of Cesare Borgia, the disastrous imbecilities of France's Charles VIII and, of course, the eccentricities of the artist himself, whirling from one ingenious but unrealizable project to another. Except for the portrait. And that exasperating smile. La Mure's excavations, admirable though they are, only further the enigma.

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 1976

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1976

Categories: FICTION