Život Mona Lize

by Pierre la Mure

Remek-delo Pjera la Mira skida veo misterije sa nežne renesansne ljubavne priče i otkriva nam tajnu Mona Lize, žene zagonetnog osmeha koju je Leonardo da Vinči učinio besmrtnom.

Ko je bila Liza de Gerardini koja je vekovima zanimala svet i izbegavala sva pitanja osmehom svojih blagih smeđih očiju? Zašto se ta bogata devojka sa petnaest godina udala za udovca koji je bio mnogo stariji od nje? Zašto je pozirala za portret koji njen muž nije poručio, koji nikad nije posedovao i na kojem je naslikana bez burme, kose spuštene niz lice, što je bilo potpuno neprilično za jednu uvaženu matronu?

I kako to da je Vinči slikao tu firentinsku domaćicu, on koji skoro nikog nije poznavao u Firenci posle dvadeset godina odsustva iz toga grada? Zašto je provodio bezbrojne časove radeći na jednom tako malom komadu topolovine, on koji svoja najveća dela nije dovršio? I to u najdramatičnijem periodu svoga života, kad je pokušavao da promeni tok reke Arno i kad je bio zauzet umetničkim dvobojem s Mikelanđelom?

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Italy, Art, Historical

360 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Pierre La Mure (15 June 1899, Nice, Alpes-Maritimes - 1976, California) was a French author. He wrote the 1950 novel Moulin Rouge about the life of the French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. This book was the basis of the classic 1952 movie of the same name. La Mure also wrote the book Beyond Desire about the life of Cécile and Felix Mendelssohn and the biographical novel "Claire de Lune" on the life and struggles of French composer Claude Debussy, published in 1962.

Bibliography:

* John D. Rockefeller (1937)
* Gongs in the Night, Reaching the Tribes of French Indo-China (1943)
* Moulin Rouge; a novel based on the life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (American edition 1950)
* Beyond Desire: A Novel Based on the Life of Felix and Cécile Mendelssohn (1955), ISBN 0871402068
* Clair de lune,: A novel about Claude Debussy (1962)
* The private life of Mona Lisa (1975), ISBN 0316513008

Reviews

[Marko Jovanović · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pjer la Mir je francuski književnik koji je čitalačkoj publici poznat po svojim romansiranim biografijama poznatih umetnika (kompozitora, muzičara, slikara).
Iako se Život Mona Lize vodi kao biografija Leonarda da Vinčija, vrlo mali deo ove knjige obuhvata period kada se u životu Lize de Gerardini (na Leonardovoj slici Mona Lize) bio prisutan poznati slikar.
Čak glavni akcenat priče nije ni na život devojke čije je ime u nazivu romana, već je glavni fokus na Firencu, njenu istoriju i vlast, svakodnevnicu i običaje njenih stanovnika u prvoj polovini 15. i početkom 16 veka. Bio je to period kada je grad bio u punom trgovinskom, ekonomskom, kulturološkom i naučnom procvatu i čitajući ovo delo saznaćete odakle potiče takav veliki napredak u svim poljima funkcionisanja jednog grada.
Zavirićete u dom firentinskih porodica i upoznati odnose između ukućana, saznaćete koliko je veliki uticaj katolička crkva imala na život Italijana, ali i na vlast i politiku ne samo Firence, već cele Italije.
Suma sumarum: ako volite da čitate o Italiji i želite da upoznate Firencu na vrhuncu njenog razvoja, i uz to otkrijete tajnu zagonetnog osmeha koji oduševljava ljubitelje umetnosti širom sveta, najtoplije preporučujem ovu knjigu. Ako želite da saznate više detalja o životu Leonarda da Vinčija, preporučujem neku drugu njegovu biografiju.
Moja ocena: 4🌟

[Afsaneh khajavi · Rating 4 out of 5]

یک کتاب تاریخی زیبا با ترجمه شیوا و کامل اقای رفیعی که اطلاعات جالبی در مورد زندگی داوینچی، میکل آنژ و تاریخ و فرهنگ اروپا میده !

[Petra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not sure why I disliked this book so much... It seemed so long.
About 60% of the book is about the history of Italy and its wars. It only made me like Italy and the renaissance less.
About 30% was the story of Mona Lisa, who was either the most annoying woman ever, or we have again a male author who has no idea how to write women.
Leonardo is present in about 10% of the book, but his portrayal - which I don't doubt is the reality - has only made me think less of him as well.
What I disliked the most was that women were treated really poorly in the story. I know this was normal in those times, but I would have appreciated if the author at least tried to word things like he did not approve of these things.
Altogether, I was bored and annoyed while reading this, so I cannot give more than 2 stars, as that would mean I liked the book.

[Marek Zákopčan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vydavateľstvo Slovenský spisovateľ pokračuje v trende románov zameraných na osudy známych umelcov a ich diel. Najnovším prírastkom v tomto smere je Život Mony Lisy a ako zvyčajne ide o skvelé čítanie, ktoré vás prenesie do obdobia renesancie a poľahky odpúta od všedných starostí. Zrejme sa nájde len minimum ľudí, ktorým by sa pri názve slávneho obrazu okamžite nevybavil jemný, záhadný úsmev mladej ženy. Okolnosti vzniku maľby sú dlhodobo opradené rôznymi legendami, ktoré len zvyšujú jej prestíž. Za viac než 500 rokov sa mnohé informácie skreslili, stratili či nahradili inými, až je napokon veľmi náročné vyselektovať pravdu. Francúzsky autor Pierre La Mure sa podujal preštudovať množstvo dostupných materiálov a výsledkom jeho úsilia je román, ktorý uzrel svetlo sveta prvýkrát v roku 1976.

"Ten deň sa skončilo Lisino zúfalstvo. Keď sa dozvedela, že neumrie, všetky znepokojivé obavy sa stratili. Uveličene sa obzerala v zrkadle na toaletnom stolíku, podrobne preskúmala svoj obraz a usúdila, že urobí všetko, aby bola neodolateľná - potom si jej krásu všimne aj Giuliano. Začala sa mimoriadne zaujímať o módu a ponosovala sa, že jej šatník nie je na úrovni. Umárala Tessu, aby jej pridala čipku na rukávy, volánik na golier, mašľu na živôtik. Tessa ju pristihla, keď si skúšala trhať obočie. Pochytili sa. Ešte búrlivejšia scéna vypukla, keď Tessa zistila, že si farbí prsné bradavky, čo bola v tom čase hlbokých výstrihov rozšírená záľuba." (str. 148)

Samozrejme, že v prvom rade ide o fiktívny príbeh, ale autorov štýl a zobrazenie doby vás privedú k domnienkam, že udalosti sa mohli odohrať presne tak. Prelom pätnásteho a šestnásteho storočia sa nevyznačoval len rozmachom umenia, ale, prirodzene, aj mocenskými bojmi, náboženskými rozpormi či posúvaním hraníc - doslovne i obrazne. Všetko sa to deje na pozadí života takpovediac obyčajnej príslušníčky vyššej vrstvy. Lisin osud sledujeme od jej narodenia do významnej obchodníckej rodiny, napojenej na samotných Mediciovcov, cez dohodnuté manželstvo so starším mužom až po predčasnú smrť. Napriek predstave o vopred naplánovanom živote mladých dievčat nemieni Lisa žiť v zlatej klietke a snaží sa naplno využiť svoj čas. Niet sa čomu čudovať, že za tajomným úsmevom na obraze mnohí vedci i laici hľadajú skryté významy, ba dokonca tušia bohatú myseľ. Pierre La Mure nenecháva nič na náhodu a predkladá čitateľovi dôkladný ponor do obdobia začiatku novoveku. V knihe vystupuje pestrá plejáda postáv - niektoré vám budú dobre známe (Mediciovci, Borgiovci, európski panovníci...), iné poslúžia buď na spestrenie deja, alebo rozšírenie vašich obzorov. Každá z nich však svojím vlastným spôsobom dotvára Lisin svet a je vám čoraz jasnejšie, prečo sa vydala už ako pätnásťročná (nesúviselo to iba s vtedajším tradičným sobášom v danom veku), aj prečo sa vlastne nechala portrétovať. Neoddeliteľnou súčasťou deja je, samozrejme, aj velikán umenia i vedy Leonardo da Vinci. V čase, keď maľoval "La Giocondu", mal už na chrbte šesť krížikov a bol na polceste k siedmemu. Okrem toho portréty neboli práve jeho bežnou oblasťou záujmu, nehovoriac o tom, že mnohé z nich ostali nedokončené. Žeby bolo treba hľadať dôvody medzi florentskými mocnármi?

"Ako väčšina osamelých ľudí a samotárov aj Leonardo podvedome túžil po niekom, komu by sa mohol zdôveriť. Pri pohľade na mladú paniu, ktorá sa naňho usmievala miernymi hnedými očami, sa mu v mysli vynárala spomienka na Albieru. Od jedného sedenia po druhé mu obe podoby väčšmi splývali. Niekedy takmer veril, že Albiera ožila a vrátila sa do jeho života. Jedného dňa sa už nezdržal a začal Lise rozprávať o ich šťastných rokoch vo Vinciho dome, ako sa hrávali na dvore, ako s jej bratom Alessandrom, ktorý sa mal stať kňazom, chodievali do prírody." (str. 340)

Na svoje si prídu najmä čitatelia, ktorí majú radi hĺbavé, pomalšie tempo. V texte, rozdelenom na tri časti (Rodina, Vpád, Portrét) prevažuje pásmo rozprávača, dialógy sa vyskytujú v oveľa menšom rozsahu. Osobne dávam prednosť dynamickejším textom s dostatkom priamej reči, ale v tomto prípade mi to neprekážalo. Asi to bolo spôsobené témou alebo atmosférou diela, pretože, ako som už spomenul, Pierre La Mure dokáže oživiť minulosť. Preto si myslím, že Život Mony Lisy má šancu osloviť aj novú generáciu čitateľov. Ide o jedinečný román, ktorý pekne dopĺňa svojich knižných súrodencov z edície vydavateľstva.

[ناصر سليم · Rating 4 out of 5]

یکی دیگه از آثار پیر لامور نویسنده کتاب مولن روژ
یک کتاب تاریخی خوب از دوره رنسانس و سرنوشت لیزا
کسی که باعث خلق شاهکار مونالیزا شد!
داوینچی با کشیدن یک خانم اشراف‌زاده به اسم لیزا که یک دختر فلورانسی بود این اثر ‌ و خلق کرد
نویسنده در این کتاب دوره رنسانس و اتفاقاتی که در رم، میلان، ناپل، فرانسه و فلورانس اتفاق میفته رو شرح میده
و در آخر کتاب به زندگی و سرگذشت داوینچی می‌پردازه

[Keti Gabrić]

Čitanje ove knjige me je privuklo ponajviše zbog biografije jednog od najpoznatijeg slikara svih vremena, Leonarda da Vinčija, a ponajviše priča kako je nastao poznati portret devojke po imenu Mona Liza. Iako je knjiga suštinski napisana kao biografija pomenutog slikara, on se možda i najmanje spominje u romanu. Što je još veće razočaranje, čak ni Mona Liza nije u fokusu knjige, već Firenca kao grad, njena istorija, vlast i svakodnevni običaji tokom 15. i 16. veka.

Ova knjiga bi bila interesantna ljudima koje zanima kulturološki i naučni procvat Firence. Položaj žena u bogatim porodicama toga doba, kao i odnosi među ukućanima, takođe i uticaj katoličkke crkve na živote običnih ljudi.

Jesam ljubitelj istorije, pogotovo renesansnog doba, ali u ovoj knjizi mi je falilo više Leonarda da Vinčija. Pjer La Mir nam samo daje mrvice njegove ličnosti i života, njegove karijere.

[Stefani · Rating 1 out of 5]

катастрофален превод, лош стил на пишување и раскажуавање, а потајно сакав книгата да биде за да Винчи, не Мона Лиза. едвај чекав да ја дочитам, само што поскоро да заврши за да можам да почнам нешто ново. нема да ја разменам засега бидејќи конечно ја собрав целата Топ хит едиција на Топер.

севкупно, не ја препорачувам книгава. единствената светла точка беше Фиренца.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are books that try to tell a story, and then there are books that try to resurrect a silence. Pierre La Mure’s *The Private Life of Mona Lisa* belongs to the latter breed, written not so much to explain the smile that has bewitched centuries but to translate it into the human pulse of its possible owner.

The novel comes as a curious mirror to La Mure’s earlier triumph *Moulin Rouge*, that lush recreation of Toulouse-Lautrec’s bohemian agony. Here again he turns biography into fiction and history into music, using the canvas of Renaissance Italy as both an aesthetic battlefield and a confessional booth.

Yet what emerges is not a historical romance about Leonardo’s sitter but a meditation on the impossibility of knowing, of representing, of loving through art. It is a novel that pretends to reconstruct Lisa Gherardini’s life, but its real subject is the restless, voyeuristic modern mind that must imagine her at all.

La Mure writes as though the entire Renaissance were a rumor remembered through dream. Florence becomes an orchestration of perfumes, whispers, and shadows of frescoes not yet dry. The Medici are there, of course, as sponsors and symbols, but they float through the narrative like faded coins in holy water. The pulse of the book belongs to two invisible characters: Leonardo and the woman who will become his stillness. Yet La Mure never allows us the comfort of clarity. His Leonardo is less the scientific visionary of legend than a haunted craftsman obsessed with perfection to the point of paralysis. His Lisa is not the domesticated wife history hints at, but a vessel for intuition, melancholy, and forbidden vitality — an embodiment of what the Renaissance was trying, and failing, to civilize. If the novel were only historical reconstruction, it would have aged into quaint costume drama. Instead, it reads like a meta-fictional séance, written from that modernist hunger that wishes to touch the unrecorded.

What makes *The Private Life of Mona Lisa* shimmer is La Mure’s refusal to separate the erotic from the intellectual. Every brushstroke of his prose is aware of the double life of art: how it seduces and imprisons, reveals and conceals. The act of painting becomes an allegory for storytelling itself — both driven by desire, both doomed to incompletion. There’s an early scene where Leonardo studies Lisa’s face under shifting light, noting the asymmetry of her mouth. He realizes he must “paint not what the eyes see but what the soul remembers.” That line, deceptively simple, carries the novel’s philosophy: art is never documentary but mnemonic, a betrayal that tries to be devotion. The so-called “private life” of Mona Lisa is therefore the private life of art, its secret economy of longing.

Reading the novel now, in an age of memes, filters, and algorithmic replication, feels uncanny. The Mona Lisa has become the first digital saint — endlessly copied, decontextualized, ironized. She appears on coffee mugs, emoji packs, AI-generated parodies. La Mure could never have predicted this metamorphosis, but his intuition of the painting’s mutability is prophetic. His Lisa is already a prototype of the modern image-subject: commodified, misread, fetishized, yet somehow retaining the stubborn mystery of an inner life.

When the narrative reaches its quiet crescendo — Leonardo hesitating before declaring the portrait finished — the reader senses the start of that endless repetition that would later include Duchamp’s *L.H.O.O.Q.*, Eco’s *Baudolino*, Byatt’s *Possession*, Barthes’s *Camera Lucida*, and the meme-ified Mona Lisa with sunglasses. La Mure’s fiction thus becomes an unwitting prequel to postmodernity, a Renaissance myth retold through the anxiety of reproducibility.

There’s a curious tenderness in La Mure’s reconstruction of Lisa’s domestic world. Her marriage to Francesco del Giocondo is not painted as cruel, merely suffocating — the quiet despair of a woman reduced to décor in her own household. Her children, her rituals, her restrained conversations, all evoke that muffled nobility of the Florentine bourgeoisie. When Leonardo enters her life, it is less as a lover than as a disturbance in the moral geometry of her existence. La Mure refuses the melodramatic route: there’s no torrid affair, no grand confession. The relationship unfolds through glances, silences, and the terrifying intimacy of being truly seen. In that sense, the novel inverts the usual male-artist/female-muse dynamic. Lisa is not passive inspiration; she is co-creator, her endurance the condition for Leonardo’s vision. The painting’s smile is, finally, her act of defiance — the smirk of someone who knows she has survived translation into myth.

The language of the novel veers between lyrical description and psychological scrutiny. La Mure’s sentences pulse with painterly precision: “The air smelled of lime and dust, the color of new walls, and of lilies decaying in secret vases.” But underneath that elegance lies a near-existential despair. The Renaissance he imagines is not an age of rebirth but of unbearable self-consciousness, a moment when humans first realized the limits of perfection. Leonardo’s notebooks, quoted and paraphrased throughout, function like the marginalia of a mind trying to map infinity. Against that vast ambition, Lisa’s life feels painfully finite — childbirth, illness, the politics of appearances. The friction between her mortality and his obsession with eternal form gives the novel its electricity. Every time Leonardo retouches the painting, he is editing her out of her own story.

What strikes a contemporary reader is how La Mure’s novel anticipates the feminist and psychoanalytic readings that would later surround the Mona Lisa myth. He seems intuitively aware that the gaze in art is a form of possession. The painter’s look, even when adoring, is a kind of theft. Yet he also shows how the object of that gaze can reverse the transaction. Lisa’s power lies in her opacity; she resists interpretation. In one passage, Leonardo complains that her expression changes each time he observes her — serenity in the morning, melancholy by noon, amusement by evening. What he calls inconsistency is actually autonomy. She refuses to stabilize into a single meaning. The “smile,” that endlessly analyzed enigma, becomes a cipher for feminine agency: not a sign of submission but of unreadability.

La Mure’s Leonardo is a study in contradiction — ascetic and sensual, visionary and coward, philosopher and gossip. The novel avoids the cliché of genius as divine inspiration; instead, it portrays intellect as a disease of perception. Leonardo’s brilliance isolates him, makes intimacy impossible. His celibacy, long mythologized, appears here as the result of an almost mystical exhaustion. He can’t touch because he sees too much. Art becomes both his salvation and his punishment.

There’s a haunting moment where he muses that God created the world only to understand His own loneliness. La Mure allows that line to hover, making the act of creation — divine or artistic — indistinguishable from narcissism. The Mona Lisa, then, is Leonardo’s self-portrait disguised as a woman.

The deeper one reads, the more the book dissolves the boundary between artist and subject. The painting becomes an interface where their consciousnesses blur. Lisa begins to dream Leonardo’s dreams; he begins to imagine her memories. The novel turns metafictional in its own quiet way — the reader realizes that what we are reading is itself a painting in prose, a simulacrum layered with historical varnish. La Mure’s research is meticulous, yet he uses it not to authenticate but to destabilize. The archival detail (guild contracts, Florentine festivals, plague rumors) feels less like fact and more like texture — the cracked pigment beneath the illusion. In this sense, La Mure anticipates the techniques of later historical metafiction: the blending of scholarship and sensuality, invention and quotation, much like Eco’s labyrinthine storytelling or A. S. Byatt’s archaeological romances.

To approach *The Private Life of Mona Lisa* as a mere historical novel is to miss its larger ambition. It is, fundamentally, a meditation on the ontology of representation — how an image replaces a life. La Mure writes as if aware of Walter Benjamin’s thesis on mechanical reproduction before it was fashionable in popular culture. He understands that every reproduction of the Mona Lisa, from engravings to postcards, is not just a copy but a reincarnation.

Leonardo’s painting, trapped behind bulletproof glass, becomes the ghost of Lisa Gherardini; La Mure’s novel becomes the ghost of that ghost. The reader becomes complicit in this chain of resurrections. We too look, interpret, consume, and therefore erase. The postmodern condition is already embedded in the Renaissance gesture.

There’s something intoxicating about how La Mure handles time. The narrative feels linear on the surface, moving from Lisa’s girlhood to her death, but emotionally it folds upon itself like a palimpsest. The past constantly reflects the future. Leonardo’s sketches of flying machines echo our contemporary drones; his anatomical studies prefigure modern surveillance of the body. In the same way, Lisa’s confined existence prefigures the digital subject’s condition — constantly observed, aestheticized, and decontextualized. Her smile becomes an algorithm before algorithms existed. It’s the smile of someone who knows she is being watched forever.

As the book progresses, La Mure allows irony to creep in. The Renaissance pursuit of beauty begins to look like a prelude to capitalism. Patrons commission paintings as investments, marriages are arranged like business mergers, and art serves reputation more than revelation. Against that, Leonardo’s impossible perfectionism appears both heroic and futile. His sketches pile up, unfinished projects multiply, and the Mona Lisa becomes his one act of completion — though even that remains unfinished in spirit. La Mure seems to suggest that art survives not because it is finished but because it never is. The painting’s endurance depends on its incompleteness; it invites every age to finish it anew.

The novel’s emotional climax comes not in the act of painting but in its aftermath. Years later, Lisa hears rumors of Leonardo’s exile in France and wonders if he still keeps her portrait. In one devastating scene, she imagines the painting hanging in a foreign court, admired by strangers who pronounce her name incorrectly. That moment transforms the entire book into an elegy for identity lost in translation. Lisa has been immortalized yet erased; she exists everywhere except within herself. The paradox feels strikingly modern — the celebrity who becomes image, the human who becomes brand. La Mure, perhaps unknowingly, diagnoses the cultural disease of our century.

Stylistically, the novel sits at an interesting crossroads between traditional historical fiction and proto-postmodern experimentation. There are long descriptive passages worthy of Flaubert, but also self-reflexive asides where the narrator admits ignorance: “Perhaps it was that morning, or another; perhaps the light was different, but who can tell how memory paints?” That line could belong to Nabokov or Proust. Indeed, one senses Proust’s ghost hovering over La Mure’s pages — the obsession with memory as art’s raw material, the melancholia of time retrieved only through illusion. The difference is that La Mure’s narrator is less indulgent; he writes with a humility rare for a historical novelist, always aware that reconstruction is a form of arrogance.

If there’s a flaw, it lies in the occasional sentimentality that creeps into Lisa’s introspection. Her inner monologues sometimes feel too modernly articulate for a Renaissance woman, her feminist consciousness a touch anachronistic. But even that anachronism has its charm — it feels deliberate, a bridge between eras. La Mure is not pretending to ventriloquize the fifteenth century; he is conversing with it. His Lisa speaks across time, her thoughts tinted by twentieth-century disillusionment. That dialogue is what gives the novel its uncanny contemporaneity. We read her not as she was but as we need her to be.

In the context of later reinterpretations — Eco’s labyrinthine historical hoaxes, Byatt’s intertextual excavations, Barthes’s meditation on the photograph’s punctum — La Mure’s book feels like an early whisper of postmodern self-awareness. It’s less ironic than its successors but equally haunted by the instability of truth. Even the title, *The Private Life of Mona Lisa*, carries a wry paradox. How can there be privacy in a face seen by millions? The novel’s answer is that privacy is not about secrecy but about the untranslatable residue of being. Lisa’s inner life remains private because no medium — not paint, not prose — can fully reveal it. Her smile survives every interpretation because it is built from ambiguity itself.

La Mure’s achievement lies also in his sensitivity to rhythm. His prose moves like a fresco sequence — broad sweeps followed by meticulous detail. He alternates between sensual immediacy and philosophical musing, creating a cadence that mimics the painter’s brush. The narrative has a painterly chiaroscuro: light against shadow, intellect against emotion. Even minor characters — servants, apprentices, rival artists — appear like figures emerging briefly from darkness, illuminated for a paragraph before receding again. The effect is cinematic yet tactile, as if the reader were walking through an old gallery where time itself breathes through the cracks.

Revisiting this novel today, half a century after its publication, one can’t help but read it against the backdrop of our post-truth world. We live surrounded by images whose authenticity is perpetually in question — deepfakes, AI art, synthetic nostalgia. La Mure’s story of a woman turned into an eternal icon becomes eerily prophetic. The Mona Lisa’s smile has been reconstructed in 3-D, animated, even made to sing pop songs. Each iteration claims to bring her closer to life, yet each pushes her further into simulation. In that sense, La Mure’s project — to give her a “private life” — feels both noble and futile. The more we humanize her, the more we expose our own hunger for illusion. His novel becomes a commentary on our inability to let mystery remain.

What lingers after reading is not so much the plot as the texture of consciousness it evokes. The reader leaves the book with the feeling of having stared too long at a painting — eyes dazzled, mind slightly feverish. One begins to sense the layers beneath perception: how beauty is constructed, how identity is consumed, how time ossifies into myth. The real protagonist of the novel, perhaps, is not Lisa or Leonardo but the act of looking itself. La Mure forces us to confront the voyeurism inherent in appreciation. To admire is to possess; to interpret is to violate. Yet without that violation, art would remain mute. The novel oscillates between guilt and gratitude — the double bind of aesthetic experience.

By its final pages, La Mure allows mortality to return. Lisa ages, her body betrays her, memory fragments. The painting remains young, serene, indifferent. That asymmetry delivers the novel’s most devastating truth: art’s immortality is purchased at the cost of the subject’s disappearance. The smile survives because the woman doesn’t. But La Mure refuses to end on despair. His last paragraphs imagine Leonardo dying in France, murmuring her name, not as an artist recalling a model but as a fellow prisoner of beauty. In that moment, the novel closes the circle — creator and creation dissolve into shared incompletion. The private life of Mona Lisa is finally revealed as the private life of anyone who has ever been seen and misremembered.

To read *The Private Life of Mona Lisa* today is to re-encounter the Renaissance as a mirror of our fractured modernity. The same humanist optimism that celebrated reason also birthed the machinery of spectacle.

La Mure’s narrative, though draped in period detail, anticipates the contemporary condition of being endlessly imaged and seldom known. His Lisa could be an influencer trapped in an algorithm, her smile calibrated for engagement. Yet within that bleak symmetry lies a strange consolation: even in total exposure, some core of mystery endures. The more we decode her, the more she escapes.

Perhaps that is La Mure’s ultimate triumph — he restores to the most overexposed face in art the dignity of unknowing. His novel doesn’t claim to tell the truth about Mona Lisa; it performs the impossibility of doing so. Like Leonardo’s unfinished notebooks, it leaves us suspended between wonder and fatigue, between knowledge and desire. And maybe that’s where all art should leave us — not enlightened, but beautifully uncertain, staring into the smile that outlives us all.

[Katia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Iako je dramatizovana knjiga, preplavljena je italijanskom istorijom više nego životom Mona Lize, što je razočaravajuće. Nadala sam se još jednoj romansiranoj biografiji o umetnosti i samoj muzi Leonarda da Vinčija, a dobila sam besplatan čas istorije i surovu realnost da je Da Vinči ništa više nego samozavarajući prevarant. Mona Liza je stvarna osoba a ne fiktivni lik sa slike, što je baš iznenađujuće, ali to je to. Nema ljubavne priče kao što obećavaju opisi sa korice. Bilo mi je baš naporno i sporo da je čitam, čak je nezainteresovanost bila tu do kraja.

[Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It is very much a "tell" book, but the author warns you of that in the beginning, it did not detract from the story though. I received an entirely different view of Leonardo da Vinci,(not so much genius as layabout displaying typical ADHD tendencies).

[Maryam · Rating 4 out of 5]

جالب بود. ارتباط مونالیزا ولئوناردو داوینچی، تاریخ ایتالیاو ... کلی چیزای جالب. بهتون پیشنهاد می کنم.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a very different perspective on Leonardo da Vinci. The lives and times of Florence and Italy in the late 1400 - early 1500's.

[Biljana Bogdanovska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Животот на Мона Лиза, всушност, како што сите забележуваат е книга за Фиренца во ренесансата, а многу малку за животот на Мона Лиза и Леонардо да Винчи. Повеќето му забележале на авторот што мал дел од книгата се однесува на овие двајца, но мене не ми сметаше тоа воопшто. Доволно се опишани нивните ликови. Нивното значење во тоа време е општествено, односно како дел од тоа современие придонесуваат или одземаат од некои работи што се случиле или требало да се случат. Напротив, нивниот сјај векови подоцна блеска. Нема човек на планетата што не слушнал за нив. Во оваа книга тие се обични ренесансни луѓе, кои се потчинуваат на тогашните општествени правила. Мона Лиза, малку похрабра од жените на своето време, Леонардо да Винчи пак литмара, измамник и човек што не си стои на збор. Сега да живее, мислам дека, исто така, би се снашол одлично. Низ романот се дознава на кој начин се менувале властите, колкаво значење имала црквата во тоа време. Измамите, потплаќањата, купувањето гласови не се непознаница ни за Ватикан, каде папата се избира на тој начин.
Портретот на Мона Лиза, нарачан и платен, Да Винчи го доставува до нарачателот со 10 години задоцнување. Ова е само еден од примерите како тој ги извршувал нарачките, а цел живот сонува да биде богат. Но, штом му платат, неретко го сместуваат и во посебни простории во дворци и вили додека наводно твори, тој губи интерес да го сработи нарачаното и одложува додека може. Многу од нарачките никогаш не ги ни исполнува. Тука, да се разбереме најмалку се ликовни дела. Тоа се водоводи, воени машини, тврдини за одбрана на градови, одводи и слично...
Мона Лиза пак, откако го губи бебето од Џулијано (нарачателот на портретот години подоцна) се мажи за Џоконда, кој е доста постар од неа, но витален маж, но трпелив. Тој ја почитува неа, па не бара, (ниту зема), исполнување на брачните обврски, сѐ додека таа не се почувствува непожелна ниту за еден маж, па решава да влезе во креветот на сопствениот сопруг. Имаат мирен и исполнет живот, додека таа како мајка се остварува преку Бартоломео (синот на Џоконда) од првиот брак (сопругата му умира).
Интересна книга!

[Piotr Borowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jedna z najlepszych książek, jakie czytałem w życiu. Przeczytałem ją już chyba 5 razy. Za każdym razem odkrywam nowe smaczki.
Jest to biografia Mony Lisy, czyli kobiety z obrazu Leonarda da Vinci. Jest to jednak także biografia Florencji w okresie największego rozwoju. Pojawiają się kolejne postacie historyczne jak Wawrzyniec Wspaniały, papież Borgia i jego syn, prorok Savonarola oraz król Francji, który postanowił najechać Włochy. W końcu pojawia się także Leonardo, malarz, który nie lubi malować i reklamuje się jako rzeźbiarz, choć nie zrobił ani jednej rzeźby. Mówi, że jest twórcą machin wojennych choć żadnej nie zbudował i architektem, choć nie zbudował nawet szopy. Dlaczego skończył obraz Lisy? Na to pytanie odpowiada autor.
podkast:
https://www.spreaker.com/user/bilberr...
youtube:
https://youtu.be/Wk0pj_xrPfk

[Sandra Bloom]

من چاپ قدیم کتاب رو دارم ۶۶۶ صفحه است
برای دختر نه ساله ‌ای که اون موقع بودم زیادی بزرگسال بود
حیلی چیزها رو نفهمیدم ازش
و بعدها تازه اینجوری بودم وااای منظورش فلان چیز بود
زندگینامه داوینچی هم داخل این کتابه
نشر ثالث اصرار داره سانسور نشده چاپ جدیدش
نمیدونم شاید از صفحات ساونارولا حذف کرده
انقلاب مذهبی مردم فلورانس به رهبری ساونارولا
جمع کردن و سوزاندن اشیای زینتی مردم
ممنوع شدن رقص در خیابون ها
یکم باهاش همذات پنداری میشه کرد

[Siloe Arce · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best history books I’ve ever read. A novel with history was a genre I haven’t read before but now I love it! In 2025 I got to see the painting myself in Paris and it was just so special because I’ve read this book.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Tanja Avukatova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Predivan opis zivota u Firenci u periodu 15-og i 16-og veka, uticaj katolicke crkve i zivot u bogatim porodicama, kao i uvid u polozaj zena u tim bogatim i utecajnim kucama. Jedna od njih je Mona Liza, ciji portret vekovima pretstavlja inspiracija i fascinacija, pa je interesantno procitati pricu o njenom stvaranju.
Jedan mali deo obuhvata i zivot Leonarda De Vincija, interesantne stvari koje nisam znala o njegovom zivotu (ne bas laskave, na zalost 😊).

[Siloe Arce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qué gran novela histórica! Me quedo con varias lecciones de historia de finales del siglo XIV e inicios del siglo XV, con el “síndrome de da Vinci”: término inventado por mí para referirme al delirio de creerse algo que uno realmente no es, se ve mucho en redes sociales este padecimiento. Con lo curioso de la vida y cómo se entrelazan unas con otras, construyendo la historia incesantemente. Con una versión nítida en mi mente de quien era esa mujer de esa cuadro de tan famoso y popular renombre. Finalmente, me quedo con la sensación de estar aún viviendo patrones de mi experiencia como mujer en pleno siglo XXI que suscitaban también hace más de 500 años. Me abrazo y abrazo a todas mis predecesoras. Gracias por este libro, fue de mucho disfrute!

[Sabi Huslova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Neviem sa rozhodnúť či sa mi páčila alebo nie. Príbeh bol silný, určite to nebude posledná kniha ktorú som čítala od tohto spisovateľa. Páči sa mi jeho štýl, ale na môj vkus tam bolo príliš veľa a príliš obšírnych historických faktov.

[Pepe · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0 ⭐⭐⭐

Pierre la Mure nos lleva al siglo xv y xvi, comenzando por la historia de los abuelos de Lisa. De esta manera nos introduce a un periodo de la historia completamente distinto al actual. Pierre hace un excelente trabajo en el cual hace que puedas inmertirte completamente en la historia. Con pequeñas notas en los pies de las páginas para hacer aclaraciones o referenciar libros. Esta novela que es una biografía dramatizada no solo se centra en la Mona Lisa, sino también en sus antepasados y personajes importante de estos siglos. Como podría ser Leonardo Da Vinci, Enrique VIII, entre otros.

Si bien muchas veces el libro puede ser algo denso, ya que cuenta con muchísima información sobre todo, logra el objetivo de entemder un poco más a est9s personajes en profundidad. Si estas buscando aprender un poco más de este período, sus costumbres, personajes importantes, situaciones conocidas y más este es el libro.

[Lorenza Passeri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uno dei miei libri preferiti, sarà che mi ricorda la mia prima adolescenza, entusiasmante ed avvincente con una storia d’amore che non si dimentica... ma soprattutto con una competente ricostruzione storica, romanzata si, ma su delle basi, non come i più recenti tentativi di raccontare la vita di Lisa..campati in aria... Le Mure per quello che può fa riferimento a documentazione dell’epoca.

[Angela Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

De mis favoritos. Interesante que esta novela histórica se escribió cuando la identidad de la Mona Lisa no era confirmada, pero aún así ya se pensaba que la del retrato era Lisa Gherardini. Desde el primer párrafo uno se transporta a la Florencia del Renacimiento.

[Caroltis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book while visiting Florence. A great read - pulls in so much of the history of the Medici family and others. Brings Florence to life!

[Raquel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Demasiado cómico. Divertido retrato de la Florencia de la época de Leonardo Da Vinci. Excelente forma de enseñar historia.

[Tijana]

Alnari

[Trebledb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A romp through history, fictionalized.

[matin yahyazade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent