Da Vinci

Patrick and I went to see the Da Vinci exhibit at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) AKA the coolest place ever, especially if you are a kid, for his birthday, (hooray for you! birthday!). That's Patrick (above) posing as Mona Lisa.

The exhibit was AMAZING. The first floor was mostly about his journals and inventions. Some where in Italy a group recreated his inventions using his journals. It was crazy to see how many things he came up with, scuba gear, the bike, tanks, helicopters, cars that move on their own, clocks etc. Most of the stuff you couldn't touch but there was quite a few things you could, and then you could see the things he invented in action.

There was a few videos throughout. One about a horse sculpture he made that was destroyed, one on his theory of the golden ratio and the Vitruvian Man (boggeled my mind man), one on Mona Lisa etc.

The second floor was mainly his art and a ton on Mona Lisa. You find out all these things about her and the painting that no one ever teaches you in art history that are really fascinating. Like that she hung in a bathroom for a long time, someone threw a rock at her, and that yes, she did have eyebrows and eye lashes, among a million other details.

So this guy created a camera that could photograph all the different layers of the painting and see in all these hard to see colors (it's really more intense than this but I don't really understand it). After photographing the painting and finding out all this stuff, he can tell us all these cool facts PLUS show us what the Mona Lisa actually looked like when Da Vinci was looking at her.

When you see the mock ups of what she actually looked like, it's stunning. She looked nothing like today. She was rosy and flush and the background was a really beautiful, inviting place. Not the scary dark place behind her now. Actually she looked like she might have come from the Rococo fad. Leo would probably kill me for saying that. But really, the colors reminded me of The Swing, by Fragonard.

I have taken a ton of art history classes and all of my professors failed to mention these details. I have even stood in front of the Mona Lisa myself, and I feel like if I would have known what the OMSI exhibit told me before I went to Paris I would have been so much more interested in her when I stood there, and probably not thinking about all the sweaty people crushed around me.
I am not going to give away all of her secrets. You must go and find those yourself. I will leave you with two amazing quotes I learned from Da Vinci though:
"Art is never finished only abandoned." and "There are those who see, those who see when shown and those who do not see."


Leo, you rock my world.

LDM