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Mona Lisa

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'Love does not need any comforting. It does not even need requiting. All it needs is itself.'

Florence, 1502. Marshal Louis de La Trémouille's small army has stopped off en route to Naples, to buy objects d'art for King Louis XII of France. Naturally, Leonardo da Vinci's workshop is on the shopping list; and during their visit to his house, the young nobleman de Bougainville chances upon the not-quite-finished Mona Lisa. He promptly, utterly and hopelessly falls in love with the woman in the painting, and is determined to find her - despite rumours that she has long ago died. A visit to an empty tomb, assault upon an Italian nobleman's mansion, duel and execution later, the secret of la Gioconda's smile is (possibly) revealed.

An entertaining story, told with style - about love, life, art, and the Quixotic things that a man will do to realise his dream.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1937

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About the author

Alexander Lernet-Holenia

59 books48 followers
Alexander Lernet-Holenia (1897 — 1976) was an Austrian poet, novelist, dramaturgist and writer of screenplays and historical studies who produced a heterogeneous literary opus that included poetry, psychological novels describing the intrusion of otherworldly or unreal experiences into reality, and recreational films. He was born and died in Vienna.

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5 stars
34 (16%)
4 stars
87 (41%)
3 stars
71 (33%)
2 stars
15 (7%)
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5 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
Profile Image for Sandra.
218 reviews106 followers
March 2, 2017
And yet again, Mona Lisa has another one who falls for her, very hard!
This time it is a young nobleman, Philippe de Bougainville, who is part of Marshal Louis de La Trémouille's entourage to gather objets d'art for Louis XII. As he becomes obsessed in finding the woman in the painting, willing to do everything so he can profess his love to her, things escalate quickly.

Alexander Lernet-Holenia wrote this gem in 1937 and the translation into English was by Ignat Avsey (well known for his translations of The Karamazov Brothers and The Idiot by Dostoevsky and another of Lernet-Holenia's, I Was Jack Mortimer, 1933).

It was an amusing and well-paced read. In the end...you have fallen for her too.

"The reason I’ve called her Gioconda is because she smiles, for in Italian the word means the happy or the smiling one."



Review copy supplied by publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a rating and/or review.
Profile Image for Marie-Therese.
412 reviews216 followers
December 10, 2020
Just a beautiful little book, this was so refreshing as I slog through overwritten, overlong contemporary novels that have taken me weeks now to read and which I begin to wonder if I'm ever going to finish.

Like all of Lernet-Holenia's work, this is wry and dry and streamlined down to the bone. There is no excess, no deep backstory, no wallowing in family history or past emotions-what you see is what you get but it's all done so skillfully, with such verve and elan and a beautifully balanced understanding of what the story can handle, how deep it can go. This is more a jeu d'esprit than real historical fiction but it's so perfectly done that I don't care. Leonardo here is little more than a sketch and yet he feels very real, particularly as he confronts the absurdity, the lack of logic, of the other characters. Each of these also feels quite realistic in his own way, and all move towards a ending that is both tragic and rather ridiculous, much like the real world events Lernet-Holenia so lightly limns.

A really lovely novella-highly recommended.
Profile Image for Tuna.
193 reviews13 followers
December 10, 2024
Bir hayalin peşine düşen genç soylunun hakikat arayışına dönüşen hikayesi. Ortaçağın hemen sonrasına Rönesansın erken dönemine denk düşen, içinden sanatın farklı türlerinden renkler geçen bir düş halesi.

Dinin toplum hayatında irtifa kaybedişi, Floransa’nın kulelerden mürekkep kusursuz mimarisi, kentin değişen siyasi atmosferi İtalya’yı neredeyse tüm ihtişamıyla gözler önüne seriyor. Asilzadelerin fırsatını bulduğunda centilmenliklerini gösterip saygınlıklarını arttırma amaçlı beyhude çabaları, Fransızların bu güzide şehirde kulaktan dolma bilgilerle karmaşa çıkarmaları ve daha neler neler yaşanıyor.

Trajik ile komik arasındaki ince çizgi yer yer aşılıyor. Yazarın son derece ciddi durumlarda bile kullanmaktan kendini alamadığı ironik dil tebessümden güldürüye seri biçimde geçilmesine sebebiyet veriyor.

Sanatın ölüme karşı gelmesi, gerçeğin yerine kendini geçirmesi; insanın imkansızı istemesi gibi olguları tartışan eser, ihtimal dahilinde olduğu sürece her olasılığın değerlendirmeye açık olabileceğini belirtiyor.
Tutkudan ihtirasa giden yolun taşları hızlıca döşenirken geri dönüş için geç kalınabileceği de kısa sürede anlaşılıyor. Sanat ile aşk arasındaki sarsılmaz bağlar sıkıca düğümleniyor.
Profile Image for Kris (My Novelesque Life).
4,694 reviews211 followers
June 11, 2019
RATING: 4 STARS
1937 (reissued 2016); Pushkin Collection/Steerforth Press

This thin volume of 96 pages packs a lot of punch. I have always liked Leonardo Da Vinci and been fascinated with his artwork and mind. In fact, my mom says the first book I picked out all by myself was a big Da Vinci art book. This story was first written in German, 1937. Pushkin has released it this month translated into English. The story is of a man who sees Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and falls for the women. He is so infatuated he digs up a woman's grave to see if his dream woman is real and alive. I really enjoyed this novella! I would recommend this one to those who love classics.

***I received an eARC from EDELWEISS***
Profile Image for Anna.
2,174 reviews1,069 followers
February 21, 2026
I have a new source of book recommendations: Vinted. After I bought a few secondhand books on there, my feed shifted from awful fast fashion garments to some genuinely intriguing novels, including one by Alexander Lernet-Holenia. I hadn't heard of him before so searched the library catalogue and came up with this novella. It's charmingly illustrated and presented, even by the high standards of Pushkin Press. I found it very funny. The plot centres upon a young and hotheaded French nobleman named Bougainville, who is sent to Florence by the king of France. Once there, an argument with Leonardo da Vinci results in him falling hopelessly in love with the Mona Lisa. Bougainville launches a farcical attempt to track down the woman herself, despite several people assuring him that she has been dead for years. This does not end well for him. Da Vinci is a wonderful presence in the narrative and the scene in which he argues that flies have four legs is absolutely hilarious. I found the novella great fun and all too brief, so will definitely look for more of ­ Lernet-Holenia's fiction.

An aside on finding books on Vinted: this is not an activity for the faint of heart. The search algorithm is inherently fuzzy and the whole website designed for buying clothing, which means that searching any book title will result in between 160 and more than 500 results. Somewhere among these might be the book you seek for £1.75 plus postage; several times this has been the case for me. But finding it requires sifting through the results with your eyes, because as far as I've been able to discover they cannot be narrowed down using the search function. I plan to try image searching using book cover screenshots next, which is a potentially promising avenue. If you can be bothered, there are some real book bargains and it's not yet enshittified like eBay. Also the book recommendations are much better than anything goodreads has come up with in recent years.
Profile Image for nefin.
34 reviews1 follower
January 20, 2025
Leonardo’nun eşsiz tablosunun yapımı sırasında Mona Lisa’ya göz ucuyla bakıp ona aşık olan Bougainville’nin kafasında kurduğu senaryodan yola çıkararak yaptıklarını tam bir sitcom gibi aktaran Alexander abiye çok sevgiler saygılar.

Akıcılığı olsun, kurgusu olsun, karakterlerin gerçek hayatla bağlantıları olsun ciddi anlamda harika bir kitaptı✨ Yazarı biraz stalklayip derinlemesine bir okuma sürecine kendimi atmak istememe neden oldu

P.S: “Ulan essssek madem bu kadar iyiydi neden bu kadar uzun sürede 50 sayfalık kitabı bitiremedin !?” diyecek sevgili arkadaşlarıma cevap olarak: AKADEMİK HAYATIM DAHA DA MI KAYSAYDI diyorum tsklr
Profile Image for Merve.
374 reviews57 followers
August 16, 2025
Aşağıda öyle güzel yorumlamişlar ki ne yazacağımı bilemedim. Kısacık ama aslında çok dolu bir hikaye. " Sanatın ölüme karşı gelmesi" gerçekten de bir düşün pesinde kendi gerçeğini yaşayan bir "çılgın" asilzadenin (tanıdık geldi mi, size de biraz Don Kişot'u cagristirdi mi :)) bir tabloya, bir sanat eserine -kendisi kanlı canlı bir kadına aşık olduğunu defaatle savunsada- aşık oluşu, hiç tanımadığı birinin portresine kendi arzu ve sevgi ihtiyacını yansıtması ve onun peşinden koşarken kendi gercekligini inşa etmesi. Sonu hüzünlü olsa da. Bu arada sanat ve aşkın karşılıklılığına dair aforizmalar kasmadan sakin sessiz sedasız ulaşan hikayede bir yandan da savaşa, fetih çabalarına, biraz da gittiği ülkeden fetih ve yağmayi kendine hak görenlere dokundurma var. Kırk sekiz sayfada oldukça çok şey söylemeyi başaran bir hikaye aslında.
Profile Image for Nur.
44 reviews1 follower
June 13, 2025
Kadının neye gülümsediğini kimse bilmiyordu… yüzyıllardır değişmeyen bir gülümseye getirilen inanılmaz bir yorum
Profile Image for Özgür Atmaca.
Author 2 books115 followers
December 8, 2025
En kısa basit anlatımla, Bir fransız paşasının, Roma Milano Napoli seferi sırasında Leonardoyla tanışması ve Mona Lisa tablosunun gördükten sonraki saplantısını anlatan kısaca bir öykü diyelim.
Don Kişotvari bir kendinden vazgeçiş ve gerçeği reddedişle ölüme kadar gitmesi insanın eksikliğini mi yoksa gerçekle ne denli bağlarını kesebileceğinin sınırı olmadığını gösteriyor.
Profile Image for Melissa.
289 reviews132 followers
June 15, 2016
I received an ARC from the publisher via Edelweiss.

This book is a very slim volume and can be read in an hour or so. It attempts to answer the question that has been nagging historians and artists for centuries: Who, exactly, was the woman Mona Lisa that Da Vinci made so famous in his painting? In this plot it is a French aristocrat that becomes obsessed with the mysterious woman in Da Vinci’s painting.

In 1502, King Louis XII of France has dispatched his Marshal Louis de La Trémouille and a small army of men to Florence in order to acquire fine art. They, of course, stop at Leonardo’s famous home and workshop on their artistic quest. Leonardo is a humorous figure in the brief plot as he is portrayed as a man with a very short attention span. He goes from one project to the next without ever completely finishing anything. As Trémouille and his men are wandering around Leonardo’s home, one of them discovers a painting of a woman behind a curtain. Leonardo assures the young nobleman, Bougainville, that the painting is unfinished and not worth so much attention. But Bougainville is instantly obsessed with the woman in the painting and has convinced himself that he is desperately in love with her.

The only facts about Mona Lisa that Bougainville can get out of Leonardo is that she was the wife of a man named Giocondo and died a couple of years ago when there was an outbreak of plague in the city. Bougainville cannot believe that this amazing woman is dead so he goes to visit her grave at Santa Croce. The small size of the space in which she is supposed to be buried convinces him that she could not possibly be buried in this tomb. He gathers together a few of his men and comes back to the church under the cover of darkness and digs up Mona Lisa’s grave.

When Bougainville finds that her tomb is in fact empty he is determined to figure out this mystery and is convinced that she is still alive. His efforts to find her cause mayhem and fighting between the Florentines and the French. Bougainville believes that Giocondo, Mona Lisa’s husband, is holding her hostage somewhere in the city and the French nobleman does some rash and brazen things to find her. He is certain beyond a doubt that she will be his lover either in this life or the next.

I thoroughly enjoyed this short book because of the characterization of Da Vinci and the little mystery surrounding the empty tomb of Mona Lisa. When written records and archaeological evidence are scarce it is amusing to project our own stories onto the lives of famous men from generations past.
Profile Image for Didi.
417 reviews
April 4, 2016
I have not been reading since mid-March and once I started to read this, I can't stop. Mona Lisa is a short read, yet a very addictive one. Started it on my Monday commute to work and finished it on the way back the same evening.

This book was written in German by Alexander Lernet-Holenia in 1937. I'm honestly surprised it took so long for it to be translated and published in English. It's a short story on the famous painting Mona Lisa, and how a man (Philippe de Bougainville) while on a campaign for Louis XII, fell in love with an unfinished painting of Mona Lisa.

Bougainville was so infatuated with the smiling Mona Lisa that it led to his ruins. I wondered whether while Leonardo finished the painting, it took away some of the mystical powers of the smiles which made Bougainville crazy, just to prevent other men from falling into the same time end.

Special thanks to NetGalley, for providing a free e-copy from the publisher, in return for an honest review.
Profile Image for Burak Kuscu.
584 reviews135 followers
November 13, 2024
Tarihi karakterlerin cirit attığı bu tarihi kurguda özellikle diyaloglardaki şiirsellik, Shakespeare'vari hava çok hoşuma gitti. İşin içinde Da Vinci varsa her zaman ilgimi çekiyor zaten. Yine öyle oldu. Beğendim.

Tavsiye de ediyorum. Yazarın serideki ilk kitabı değil. Baron Bagge'da daha önce seriseki yerini almıştı. Ben onu okumadım henüz. İlk fırsatta diyelim.
Profile Image for Jayaprakash Satyamurthy.
Author 42 books519 followers
April 23, 2020
A delightful novella, satirical, farcical, briefly sentimental, but ultimately in accordance with Leonardo, shown here as a kind of pragmatic if eccentric spirit.
Profile Image for duygu.
25 reviews1 follower
Read
March 2, 2025
bougainville sanırım beni delulukta yenebilecek güçlü bi rakip
Profile Image for Marko Jankov.
62 reviews1 follower
June 15, 2025
3.5 this was pretty fun but reading it right after the transcendent Baron Bagge is a tough act to follow
Profile Image for Zoe.
115 reviews1 follower
December 3, 2023
Incredibly charming little book about a young nobleman who, upon seeing the unfinished Mona Lisa painting in Da Vinci's studio, becomes so consumed with the real-life model, he very quickly brings about his own demise in his efforts to find her. The prose is streamlined and clear-cutting, humorous and whimsical, and twinged with sadness. Bougainville is so wrongfully romantic and as earnest as they come—he desperately seeks truth because he believes it is something that exists. Whether it does might be irrelevant. This is both an interesting piece of historical speculative fiction about just how the Mona Lisa got her smile, and also a sort of prosaic essay on not just the vicious cycle between art, love, and madness, but the weight of obsession that comes from the ownership we take of images. (And women).
Profile Image for ɐɹɥǝz ★ dagustun.
236 reviews5 followers
February 12, 2025

“Behind every smile lies a secret, and behind every secret, a story untold.”

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲

This was a very short book, but it was captivating. Set in Renaissance Italy, Mona Lisa delves into the mystery behind Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting. Through poetic prose and atmospheric storytelling, Lernet-Holenia explores the life of Lisa del Giocondo, the woman behind the legendary smile, and the enigmatic relationship she shares with Leonardo.

The novel paints a vivid portrait of Florence during the height of the Renaissance, capturing the intrigue, the art, and the quiet sorrow that permeates the painting itself. Despite its brevity, it left me lingering on every detail, every shadow of a smile. It’s beautiful and brilliantly crafted—a small book that holds an immense power but I really couldn’t rate it above 3.
Profile Image for Zeynepozmenunlu.
72 reviews11 followers
February 3, 2025
Kitap sizi alıyor, Leonardo da Vinci'nin yaşadığı döneme götürüyor. 50 sayfalık kitapta, o atmosferi öyle güzel anlatıyor ki. Atölyesini, Mona Lisa'yı resmettiği anları, resim dışındaki uğraşılarını size anlatıyor. Kısacık bir roman olmasına rağmen çok şey öğretiyor. Yazar Mona Lisa üzerinde aslında bir kurgu yaratmış. Acaba böyle mi oldu diye düşündürüyor. Her zaman merak edilen bir konuya kendince bir nokta koymuş. Doğduğum günden beri ; Mona Lisa tablosu evimizin en güzel yerindeydi. Halen hayatımın en temel resimlerinden ve kişiliklerinden biri. Okumasam olmazdı.
Profile Image for Andy.
1,250 reviews231 followers
February 10, 2026
A visiting French officer falls in love with Leonardo da Vinci‘s unfinished portrait of La Gioconda, the Mona Lisa. Chaos in shoes. Not quite like the dream like quality of Baron Bagge or Count Luna, both of which I loved, but endearing nonetheless. I found the writing strangely reminiscent of Stefan Zweig. Which is perhaps not surprising given that they were both Austrian and lived during similar periods.
Profile Image for Lulu's Life.
182 reviews22 followers
February 23, 2025
lernet ile bu minik hikaye ile tanistik. mona lisa’nin gizli gulusu uzerine kisacik bir hikaye yazmis olmasi doyurucu bir metin olmasa da cok hosuma gitti ve turkiye gundeminin aci olaylarinin pes pese yasandigi bir donemde aklimi biraz da olsa gundemden uzaklastirmak bana iyi geldi.. kitaplar hakikaten en iyi ilac fani insan hayatinda…
Profile Image for Nicolle.
168 reviews
February 7, 2018
I lost count of how many times I rolled my eyes at the sheer male arrogance and dramatics of Bougainville.

From a single glance at a painting he managed to "fall in love" and invent an entire story of his "beloved" being a damsel in distress and needing his help.
Profile Image for Josiah.
250 reviews
July 14, 2018
An outstanding short story about the limits of perception and the role of the sublime that art plays in the mundane. The gap between the two cannot be bridged from our end, as Bougainville finds out: but it can offer a glimpse, the crack in everything that lets the light in.
Profile Image for Merve K.
203 reviews31 followers
January 2, 2025
2025 yılının ilk kitabı oldu Mona Lisa. Zaten 50 sayfalık kısacık bir öykü. Yazardan daha önce Baron Bagge'yi okuyup çok da sevmemiştim ama bunu sevdim.
Leonardo da Vinci'nin Mona Lisa tablosunu yaptıktan sonra bir adamın bu tabloyu görüp, tablodaki kadına aşık olduktan sonra onu saplantı haline getirmesini konu alıyor kitap. Severek okudum. Yeni yıla güzel bir başlangıç kitabı oldu.
Profile Image for loralai.
189 reviews3 followers
February 3, 2025
Kısa akıcı bir kitaptı. Sanat tarihine de ilgi duyan biri olarak severek okudum. Sadece bana biraz fazla kısa geldi. Daha da uzayıp detaylanabilir gibi hissettim ya da belki bir tiyatro şeklinde yazılsaydı daha etkileyici olurdu diye düşünüyorum. Yine de güzeldi ve önerebileceğim bir kitap.
84 reviews2 followers
May 7, 2020
A short read but certainly thought provoking and rather fun too
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews