After Leonardo da Vinci

There may be no more iconic painting than Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. 779). This rendition was painted by Pompeo Coccia (d. 1960), a Professor at the University of Rome who spent time in Paris in the early twentieth century. Affixed to the painting's reverse is a handwritten note transcribing the stanza devoted to Leonardo in Charles Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal, thereby underscoring the painting's broad and enduring cultural appeal.¹

¹ The second stanza of "Les Phares" (The Beacons) reads: "Léonard de Vinci, miroir profond et sombre, / Où des anges charmants, avex un doux souris / Tout chargé de mystère, apparaissent à l’ombre / Des glaciers et des pins qui ferment leur pays" ("Leonardo da Vinci, dark, unfathomable mirror, in which charming angels with sweet smiles full of mystery appear in the shadow of glaciers and pines that enclose their country.")