Mona Lisa Smiles

No, I am not talking about the Julia Roberts film. Though I liked it very much.

I was surfing the net some years back and came across Mark Harden's Artchive, an extraordinary storehouse of digital reproduction of great works of art of all times.
Well, to be frank, it was not idle and random surfing that led me to this site. I was wondering for sometime whether I could ever have a look at the works by the great masters of yore and it struck me that even if the originals are far beyond the reach of ordinary folks like me, I could try and locate some prints in the net. Google was not my favoured search engine those days. In fact I don't think Google had yet come of age. I am talking of more than ten years back. So, I tried Yahoo and it did not disappoint me.
I found a treasure house. I could look up Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Rembrandt, da Vinci, Michelangelo and so many others.. You name any of the old masters and he is there with some of his collections well catalogued and well documented.I must admit, before anyone jumps to a wrong conclusion, that I am neither an artist nor an art connoisseur. Nor a student of art history nor even a millionaire looking for prospective buys. I don't own a gallery nor do I intend to have one. Not that I can afford. I am just an ordinary person for whom I believe the masters painted . I just wanted to have look at these paintings.

The site allows you to download the pictures. Many of which I did. In fact, I was again browsing through some of them when the idea of writing this post was born. I did have have print outs of some of these works and framed them to hang on the walls of the small flat I live in. But no one visiting me have so far noticed them though I have a Renoir or a Picasso or a Michelangelo, even if it is only a print. Sad truth is that the prints are not large enough, nor are the walls. After all, it is not a millionire's wall.
I had an opportunity of visiting some parts of Europe later and stay in in Paris for two nights. The tour around Paris in the package that I had to opt for did not include a visit to the Louvre.So, I decided to drop off at the Tuileries to pay a visit to the museum. Alone.

It still towers over the city!
The palace which Louvre once was, is magnificent , but its view, in my opinion, has been marred by a modern monostrosity, a glass pyramid at the entrance to the underground lobby, which, by itself, could have been beautiful but just did not fit in the landscape. I thought we only had the distinction of spoiling the beauty of a heritage building or an ancient piece of architecture !
Once inside, I could have spent hours, but I had little time. So I had to content myself by visiting one or two wings. My priority of course was to see the the smile that has intrigued people of many generations. When I reached there, I saw most visitors had similar priorities. It was almost a Kolkata scene. A crowd eager to have a look and a snap. Even with my Kolkata expertise I could not push through the crowd to get a frontal picture with my camera.
Much better images of Mona Lisa or for that matter of Venus de Milo shown below, are available in the net , but I thought why not get my own 'labour of love' in my post.
Both these works of art, one a painting and the other a sculpture, are perhaps the most easily recognisable to the common people, because they have been most often reproduced, one in print,the other in replicas throughout the world. People of my vintage would remember the replicas of Venus de Milo sold in Rather Mela (Fairs held on the occassion of the Rath Yatra festival ) year after year, possibly even now.
Since I started with the search of Van Gogh paintings when I used Yahoo, I should include one here for whoever wants to have a look. I don't know why I have always liked Van Gogh. Is it because of the paintings which appealed to me, the abandon with which he painted and the strong brush strokes and vibrant colours he used or because of the life Van Gogh had to live ? I don't know but I regret I missed going to the museum which store his paintings at Amsterdam.
Olive trees !
I should have concluded here, but I can not resist the temptation of putting up one piece of art which defined the times that the artist lived in and possibly continue to define ours.

Guernica