Travelogue: Monalisa, Louvre Museum 2003
If there is a city I will always be in love with, it's Paris. You can talk to me about how smelly and arrogant French men are, or how dirty the Metro is, or how there's dog poo everywhere. I don't care. I can't get enough of the Louvre Museum, the cafes, this Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall at Paris' Chinatown district or even the Erotic Museum located a stone's throw away from the infamous Moulin Rouge. :P
What's quite interesting was that I found my first viewing of Da Vinci's Monalisa a bit of an anticlimax. I practically sprinted along this long hallway - passing by paintings by other famous artists - to discover that the Monalisa is protected by a glass sheet that effectively hinders anyone from getting a really good look at it. As you can see from this rather hazy picture, the glare from the skylight meant I couldn't really see anything.
PLUS, hordes of tourists all wanted to take a picture next to it. I had to fight my way through the crowd to go right to the front of the painting and stare at it for a few minutes. Wondering whether her smile is a mysterious smile indeed and trying to guess why she would smile like that.
Alas, I couldn't. Every few seconds or so, a person would push me very slightly to the side to take a picture. Or, there's a queue of people behind me all muttering why I'm taking longer than two minutes to look at the painting.
To conclude, I didn't think Monalisa was all that special. But that's partly because its overwhelming popularity among the Louvre visitors meants it's hard to get a one-on-one moment with it.
I had more fun looking at other paintings. Specially those that weren't behind glass sheets. A couple of them I've also attached here (not sure if they're from Louvre, also went to a couple of other museums there, Musee D'Orsay and another). Apologies for the poor resolution. I used an el cheapo digital camera. :P
