Word: leonardo
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...most pampered and mysterious ladies of the Italian Renaissance took up official residence in Washington last week. With a minimum of fanfare, Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra dei Bend (see color), acquired from the private collection of Prince Franz Josef II of Liechtenstein for more than $5,000,000 last month, went on display in solitary splendor in the National Gallery's "Lobby B," a small anteroom with a 28-ft. ceiling, limestone walls and a marble floor...
...Norton Simon, because Simon refused to buy unless he could take the painting outside the country for a thorough pre-purchase examination. Simon's skepticism was understandable. A strip at the bottom of the painting has been obviously repaired. And while the 16th century biographer Vasari mentions that Leonardo did such a painting, there is no record of what became of it or whether it is the same picture that became the property of Franz Josef's ancestors...
Maxwell Smart. Evidence that the lady is Ginevra is a scroll-like design, incorporating a juniper tree, that appears on the back of the painting, plus a juniper tree behind her head (ginevra means juniper in Italian dialect). Proof that it is by Leonardo lies in the handiwork itself. When the National Gallery began serious negotiations with the Prince, shortly after the deal with Simon had fallen through, Director John Walker sent Mario Modestini, a New York restorer, to examine the painting. "He went over it, literally, with a microscope for 2½ hours," reported the gallery's secretary...
When the painting goes on display at the gallery on March 17, it may cause some controversy, for Ginevra dei Benci is no Mona Lisa. Leonardo painted her some 29 years earlier, when he had only recently completed his apprenticeship in the Florentine studio of Andrea del Verrocchio. The technique, while accomplished, is stiffer than that of his later works. Yet Ginevra, a curly-haired blonde with narrow, almost Mongolian eyes, a stern, pale mouth and alabaster skin, is clearly one of Leonardo's ladies. Like La Gioconda, she is ambivalent, as cold as she is beautiful...
...ovum can become a commercial. Noses nudge knowingly from a page dealing with psephology. Five pages of pebbled and scaly abstract photography resolve themselves into a closeup of human toes to make the point: "The wheel is an extension of the foot." One entire spread is printed in Leonardo-like "mirror writing," and another is set upside down just to show how absurd the whole concept of books can be. Indeed, the authors of this eye-stopping, mind-wrenching whatzis have created the ultimate in non-books...