| "The Mona Lisa is a painting that has been incredibly well preserved. The wood is in an absolutely incredible state of preservation for a painting that is, after all, five centuries old," says Jean-Pierre Cuzin, Curator of Painting at the Louvre. The portrait is just over thirty inches tall by almost twenty-one inches wide, painted on a fine-grained white poplar the favorite wood of Italian painters of Da Vinci's time with the official Louvre seals stamped on the back.
The portrait was once more brightly colored than it is today. It was covered with a varnish probably applied in the 16th century, perhaps to protect it from the moisture of the baths in which it hung at Fontainebleau which has darkened and turned the painting slightly greenish. But it is this varnish that gives us the best means of authenticating the painting. "One can imitate or copy a painting to perfection," says Cuzin, "but the craquelure all the tiny cracks in the painting's varnish which are documented very clearly in the photographs cannot be recreated artificially. There was no doubt that this painting was the original by Da Vinci." | | ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2Bpv6at0q6pnqufm8GpsdaoqaWcX6K8r62%2BpaCsmV%2BiuabCxKWWa2edobK3sctrlpqtpJ2yr8DInKCtsV6dwa64
