https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/ ... -vinci-art‘Short of imagination’: Germaine Greer scorns Leonardo da Vinci’s art
The prolific author says the Mona Lisa looks ‘half-dead’ while speaking at Hay festival
Leonardo da Vinci, the incomparable Renaissance master? Actually, he was rather sloppy, disappointing and derivative.
His greatest work, the most popular painting in the world? “The bloody Mona Lisa … this half-dead woman, this strange green-faced female.”
The contrarian views of the writer Germaine Greer added zing to an event on Monday at the Hay festival in Wales, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the death of a man considered the greatest polymath of all time.
Greer said she was repeatedly “disappointed in Leonardo as an artist”. On the Mona Lisa, she said the painting was typical of Venetian art in the period.
“The most important thing to me about this bloody picture is that this woman looks as if she is already dead,” said Greer. “As for the famous smile, this is what I call the Leonardo smirk. You find it everywhere.”
She pointed to his painting of St John the Baptist in the Louvre – “smirk” – and his drawing The Incarnate Angel: a boy “stark naked with a roaring erection … terrific”, she said dismissively.
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Wikipedia
τι στην ευχη, με το ζορι πρεπει να πουν κατι να κανουν μπουγιο;