From Canvas to Language: The Mona Lisa as Myth

Intersections between Visual Arts and Writing in the Nineteenth-Century

Abstract

What is the origin of the mysterious character of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa? More precisely, which cultural discourses crystallize in this apparent mystery? For centuries, Leonardo’s painting has served as a receptacle of values that have transformed it into a modern myth. This article aims to identify a series of nineteenth-century texts as the main agents in the construction and consolidation of the Mona Lisa myth, with the goal of analyzing these textual productions as ideological operations, thereby revealing the cultural and social dynamics that reinforced this perception of the work.