Researchers find a rare compound, plumbonacrite, in first layer of Mona Lisa | Hacker News Reader

Researchers find a rare compound, plumbonacrite, in first layer of Mona Lisa

phys.org

57 pointswglb43 comments

It's always interesting to see research like this and sit back and wonder about how and why certain things get studied. Like, this required some funding and time. And I'm someone who enjoys a lot of classical art, but I find it hard to care this much about an old painting...

When I was in university studying materials science I remember a grad student friend vying to get time and funding to get to a certain syncrotron for X-ray diffraction studies of potential new solar cell substrates (diffused AL/amorphous silicon:H iirc..). I can't imagine the level of facepalming if he'd have been told the department had to bump that research because.... 'hey we need to look at properties of the paint from the Mona Lisa....'

Indeed, I have a Mexican friend (I'm American) who when we met was a chemistry postdoc in CDMX. His entire focus (as a postdoc) is to examine chemical compositions of paintings and artwork (from pre-modern artifacts to Diego Rivera murals/frescos). Not sure where all the funding comes from but believe a lot of it is from the Mexican Gov for cultural and regional restoration efforts.

A few years back him and a colleague traveled to San Francisco to analyze a multi-panel Rivera piece ("Pan American Unity" [1]) that was on display at (and owned) by City College San Francisco. The goal was to move the panels from CCSF to the SFMOMA [2] for display and their task was to make sure it could be moved properly to minimize damage. It was super cool to visit and see their workspace and tooling.

For the mural itself - it's amazing and huge and recommend folks take a look if they can.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_Unity [2]: https://riveramural.org/

Funding for these kinds of things often comes from cultural restoration needs - and from forgery/debunking needs.

Knowing the actual compositions and behaviors of the chemicals and materials used at different times can be absolutely critical for both.

To counter point, the Mona Lisa makes so much money from people going to see it, it’s not surprising that some money could be found to do this research. And the write up on the composition of the Mona Lisa paint would get exponentially many more readers than any real research your friend would be doing.

You can't counterfeit something accurately if you don't truly know how it was made

>wonder about how and why certain things get studied.

i've seen paint composition studies that were used to understand earlier century chemical mortality; it's not entirely impractical.

Well we have a lot of old stuff that is valuable. And shockingly the stuff doesn't get any newer — quite the opposite.

Knowing what it consists of is important for keeping it in good condition. Which a thing like the Mona Lisa this is both culturally and economically a no-brainer.

Imagine the moral dilemma if they strike oil five layers down.

Well, it's oil paint, so I wouldn't be surprised.

This is interesting, wasn't expecting "lead paint!" to be the punchline here

We shouldn’t be surprised: lead is toxic and Leonardo is now dead.

(This is a very old Cyc (AI) joke)

Did he use paint and paint brushes?

That'll be best shock is he was the best finger painter ever.

He had amazingly feathery fingernails.

The takeaway should really be that there is nothing objectively extraordinary about the Mona Lisa. It is mostly famous for being famous.

Wait, as opposed to famous.. for not being famous?

As opposed to being famous because it is a revolution in style or the material is historic or because it’s inherently interesting or moving.

How can you possibly argue the Mona Lisa isn’t inherently interesting or moving? It wouldn’t be the most famous painting in the world if it wasn’t interesting or moving.

And no, it’s not because it was stolen. Most people don’t even know it was stolen. I loved the painting and it moved me from the moment I saw it as a child.

> It wouldn’t be the most famous painting in the world if it wasn’t interesting or moving.

The most popular book in the world is the Bible and I never found it very interesting

The overall human majority probably falls upon the side of (people who don't find the Christian Bible very interesting), as opposed to those who worship it. After all, Wikipedia tells us there are only about 2.4 billion total Christians on the planet.

Therefore, you fall in line with the dominant human viewpoint, the popular opinion.

I don't know what my point is, apart from a friendly irony that in eschewing (the) popularity (of the Bible), you're actually doing the popular thing.

I bet you the majority of the population doesn't think Mona Lisa is anything amazing and is just a famous painting. They just don't come out of the woodwork to tell you that

I do find it interesting that it is so famous, but I think it’s probably due more to a confluence of coincidental events than anything inherent to the painting. Rerun the universe simulator 1M times (adding a hard requirement that this paining gets painted every time) and I’d bet this level of popularity is an outlier.

I just don’t think popularity means much outside of a lot of people knowing about it in some vaguely positive light. Sometimes things are popular because they are incredible (the Beatles), sometimes they are popular just because of randomness or situational context (most pre-20th century American literature)

It was fairly unknown outside of art buff circles until it was stolen in 1911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa#Refuge,_theft,_and_v...

It's not a mysteriously unknown technique, or of particular historical importance, or the only painting by da Vinci. It become famous mostly because of the theft incident and once you're famous the famousness tends to feed itself because people do things like X-ray it which adds to the mystique. It was owned by some famous people including Napoleon and it's spent a lot of time in art museums being shown to the public, but there's no secret message on the back or alien decoder ring or demascus steel/roman concrete "how'd he do it?!" mystery.

A lot of paintings get stolen though, what makes this case special

Shrug, good question. I guess that's what it means to be famous for being famous.

Back in the 70s, the Pet Rock became all the rage. Considering all the novelty gag gifts that come and go, why did that one catch fire? Some memes catch on while most don't for inscrutable reasons. Most likely there was some notable cultural reference to it and its nudge into cultural relevance further fed to more gains.

If it didn’t have some other appeal the theft would never have led to the worldwide appeal of the painting. The theft may have kickstarted the recognition but this painting has something special about it, the woman, her expression, there’s a mystery about it.

I loved the painting before I ever knew it was stolen.

I think it’s fair to say there is something about this painting that isn’t in many other works or most other works, and it’s a human and psychological quality more than some special painting technique.

> I loved the painting before I ever knew it was stolen.

But is that because the painting was already famous and well known because of the theft (despite your not knowing about the theft)? That is, if you were a few hundreds years old and showed in your journals how you loved the painting in the decades before it was stolen, that would be significant. But saying you loved the painting before you know it had ever been stolen, but falling in love with it in the decades after it became famous because of the theft doesn't mean as much, does it?

But there are many famous paintings out there that I know of because they are famous that I didn’t fall in love with.

The argument seems to be that I fell in love with the Mona Lisa as a result of it being famous, versus some other quality it has which I find appealing.

But for example, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers is also incredibly famous but I don’t find that painting appealing at all. For me, it’s boring. Ditto for many other famous paintings. What I’m saying is that I’m not sure so sure that’s it’s logical to say: “oh this thing is just popular/well loved because it’s famous, there’s no other reason”

But, if the Mona Lisa wasn't famous because of the theft, would you have even been aware of it to fall in love with?

Oh sure. Nobody's telling you personally not to like it or discounting the reasons you like it. We're just talking about the thermodynamic limit of the likingness of it over a spherical cow average of humans ;) And maybe also asserting that there are many other lesser known paintings that also have those qualities that you enjoy but you haven't seen because they weren't slingshotted into the public conciousness. These things are linked but not necessarily causitive. My claim above is even simpler, which is that I'm surprised people are spending time sussing out what specific paint was used because I didn't think that was even a question people asked. It's a painting from a known artist with a known style and known materials that both it and its sibling paintings have been pretty well pored over before.

Anyway like what you like and ignore the nerds :)

Nah, it’s just as often complete dumb luck too.

Throw enough stuff at the wall, eventually something sticks.

Do it often enough, and something becomes iconic.

And even if it was only slightly different from its peers at the time, that one thing is what will be remembered.

As opposed to being famous based on merit. The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world despite not being all that remarkable, at least by pure aesthetics.

It wouldn’t be as famous as it is if it didn’t have something remarkable about it. Art is about creating emotion in people and whether you think it has good “aesthetics” or not, the Mona Lisa captures people’s imaginations almost more than any other painting in the world.

For me there is a mystery and secret in the Mona Lisa which doesn’t exist in other paintings that might show great “skill” and in the end, art is about emotional impact, not what some critic thinks is “skillful”

Sometimes “remarkable” means a meme randomly caught on, or a good marketing team. There are plenty of famous things that are poor imitations of relative unknowns.

There is something uncanny in this painting, my take is that it’s not a woman that was painted.

It is probably a combination of many things.

It is made by one of the famous and influential person in history. It is aesthetically pleasing, a bit mysterious yet accessible. The technique is interesting. And with the 1911 theft, it comes with an exciting story.

Taken individually, none of these qualities are that remarkable, but it is the combination, and a bit of chance.

It probably got picked up and used as an example of ‘famous stolen art’ in a movie too, which skyrocketed it.

Have you seen what other people were painting in the early 1500s? Leonardo's work is extraordinary for his time. Comparing the Mona Lisa with later art is a bit like measuring somebody while you're standing on their shoulders.

Since people really don’t know why it is famous, it is because of the sfumato technique employed. This is the painting that employs it most successfully (not sure if it was his first with sfumato, but surely the most prolific)

Leonardo is one of the first painters using the technique and who studied optics and wrote about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato

I think the Romans knew about sfumato as well, so it fits in the renaissance thinking of the time.

I've always heard that it is famous because it was stolen, and had lots of drama and global news cycles surrounding its eventual return and display. This is the first time I've heard of Sfumato let alone seen someone suggest a niche technique is the reason people are aware of the painting.

Well I think the drama around it might have helped, but as someone who has done art history, I can’t remember the stolen part being mentioned.

Leonardo seems to be very famous in his time and after, and he died under the patronage of the king of France. I highly recommend reading his notebooks, it gives a glimps of the mind of this genius. His observational skills were impressive. In a way he was a hacker if you take the expanded meaning of the word: always thinking up new things and inventions.

And at the time it was stolen, image reproduction techniques capable of displaying artwork in at least recognisable fidelity within mass-market publications were just being introduced. (The distribution of such images probably also reduced the effective value of the work-as-stolen as it would be more readily recognised if displayed publicly.) Attention returned repeatedly to the Mona Lisa through numerous subsequent events, e.g., Duchamp's reproduction with a beard and mustache added, in 1919.

<https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-the-mona-lisa-so-fam...>

<https://www.wikiart.org/en/marcel-duchamp/l-h-o-o-q-mona-lis...>

Google's Ngram viewer suggests a further increase of references in print following 1980, though that might reflect a disproportionate presence of academic works within the scanned corpus:

<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Mona+Lisa&year...>

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