Older women have more power than they realise. That occurred to me after pushing through the crowds at the Louvre, on a rainy autumn day in Paris, to see the painting that over 10 million people line up to see every year. Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
This painting isn’t big. It’s not grand. In comparison to The Wedding at Cana – the work on the opposite wall – the more famous painting is insubstantial. Very modest for a billion-dollar artwork. The biblical painting is 70 metres in length, and is the biggest painting in the Louvre. There’s people touching each other, people laughing, people drinking, feet being massaged. But it’s Lisa they want. Plain, thin-lipped Lisa.
She’s outdoing Jesus turning water into wine by about 700%. She doesn’t have any party tricks. She’s not turning snails into vapes. She’s just smirking. That famous smile that follows you around the room has hundreds of people pushing past the barricades to get a selfie with a 500-year-old woman. The Mona Lisa has more pull than a Kardashian. It’s effortless. People are weirdly captivated. How can a centuries-old woman in brown and green have so much charisma?
It seems stupid. Why this painting? Why in a gallery full of the most remarkable talent over centuries, are we captivated by the Mona Lisa? Many paintings are more impressive. Many paintings are grander. Many are more colourful. This is just a portrait. There’s not even a baby grappling for a breast or a man stabbing a horse, or a dog at her feet, or fruit in a bowl. All the details of the works I’ve seen seem meaningless to Mona. She reminds me of the world’s greatest lesson. Something older women know well. Stop trying so hard. Just be. Just be you. Be Mona Lisa. You’re enough.
The wonderful thing about the Mona Lisa is that no one really knows who she is. And like all great women, she’s unfinished. That’s a reminder too. That there is still a story to be told. More to learn. And Mona, well, she’s not one for the quiet life. She courts controversy. Like her trip to Tokyo for a global outing in the 1970s, when someone spray-painted her to protest the National Museum’s refusal to provide access to those with disabilities.
Last year she copped some soup from climate protesters who were calling for the right to healthy and sustainable food. The bulletproof glass meant it didn’t touch the sides, but she gave climate change a global platform.
Like many women, Mona has survived some pretty horrific abuse. Like in 1956 when some bloke threw acid on her. Then in the same year she copped a rock from a homeless man who was hoping the act would send him to prison so he’d have somewhere warm to sleep. In 2009 a woman threw a mug at her. It was unclear why, but confident women do disrupt. And in 2022 she got smeared with cake.
She was even stolen, gone without a trace for over two and a half years until she was discovered being sold to an art dealer in Florence. Mona Lisa has a story. She has an effect on people. And she belongs to them. The people. Once part of the royal collection, after the French Revolution she belonged to the people. That’s a pretty extraordinary history for one little painting, of one mysterious, quietly confident, daringly smug woman.
I’m impressed. I’m practising that smile. There is a little Mona in us all.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox column has appeared in The Echo for almost 23 years. The personal and the political often meet here; she’s also been the Greens federal candidate since before the last two federal elections. The Echo’s coverage of political issues will remain as comprehensive and fair as it has ever been, outside this opinion column which, as always, contains Mandy’s personal opinions only.
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