Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa-With The Louvre In
Mind
The crowd around the famous painting of
Mona Lisa by Leonardo Di Vinci posed all
by itself (or is it herself) in the Louvre in a central room in one of the
wings of that museum in Paris was ten deep in order for each and every viewer
to get their very own digitally-contrived photograph of the bemused lady (that
was Sam’s take on her quizzical look but he claimed no expertise in the matter
and left it to the art critics who may very well have determined that she was
merely being ironic before the master’s gaze). Everybody except Sam, and not
excepting Laura who was all excited about being in the same room with the lady
despite the hard fact that you could not get within ten feet of the portrait
(held back first by a satiny red rope barricade, then by the surly looks of two
museum guards whose only job was apparently to look surly and finally lurking
unmentioned in the background although nobody tested this possibility out the
combined forces of the Paris police, Interpol, the French Foreign Legion and
NATO if you took a mad dash toward the wall in which the lady was encased. So
Sam was content to “cool his heels” as Laura waited her turn to get that once-in-a-lifetime
shot of the lady (that “cooling the heels” nothing new since he had perfected
the art over the years waiting in the world’s shopping venues for his lady).
That “cooling the heels” moreover
allowed him to wander about the room where there were actually a fair number of
Titians and other masters to gaze at closely (within a foot a distance he
respected since other surly guards might set upon him and maybe the dreaded lurking
second phalanx too if he got too close but close enough to see the brushstrokes
that he was always interested in observing when he looked at a painting and
which was emphatically not possible with milady) and to wander out in the main
hallway and look at some Di Vinci’s portraits that he thought were actually
better than the famous lady’s.
And that was the point that he tried to
make to Laura after she came down from her high of being with twenty feet of
probably the most famous painting in the Western world. Here they were at the
world famous Louvre, busily trying to maneuver through the endless crowds that
filled every exhibition room (and worst the blazing lights underground mall
that seemingly had more customers than the museum itself as well as the restaurant
areas where they had wanted to grab a quick bite to eat to fortify them for the
rigors of the day’s work), and its most famous product (except maybe sweet
Venus De Milo) could easily have been purchased at the museum store with less
work.
Sam didn’t want to generalize (and
didn’t really want to burst Laura’s euphoric balloon) but it really was funny
that the painting had sunk so deeply into Western consciousness that it was
rather anti-climactic in actually viewing the thing even that twenty feet away.
Laura naturally poured water on Sam’s so-called theory (her expression) until
they were leaving for the day (the museum really was as advertised at least a
two day adventure) after viewing plenty of great Rodins, a ton of interesting
Greek and Roman statuary and some Asian art in the new wing extension when she
noticed a small mini-shop which had this most exquisite photograph of Mona Lisa. Better she admitted than
anything that her “dinky” (her term again) digital camera could produce. Sam
silently turned his head away and smiled.
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