Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa-With The Louvre In Mind

 

The crowd around the famous painting of  Mona Lisa by Leonardo Di Vinci posed all by itself (or is it herself) in the Louvre in a central room in one of the wings of that museum in Paris was ten deep in order for each and every viewer to get their very own digitally-contrived photograph of the bemused lady (that was Sam’s take on her quizzical look but he claimed no expertise in the matter and left it to the art critics who may very well have determined that she was merely being ironic before the master’s gaze). Everybody except Sam, and not excepting Laura who was all excited about being in the same room with the lady despite the hard fact that you could not get within ten feet of the portrait (held back first by a satiny red rope barricade, then by the surly looks of two museum guards whose only job was apparently to look surly and finally lurking unmentioned in the background although nobody tested this possibility out the combined forces of the Paris police, Interpol, the French Foreign Legion and NATO if you took a mad dash toward the wall in which the lady was encased. So Sam was content to “cool his heels” as Laura waited her turn to get that once-in-a-lifetime shot of the lady (that “cooling the heels” nothing new since he had perfected the art over the years waiting in the world’s shopping venues for his lady).          

That “cooling the heels” moreover allowed him to wander about the room where there were actually a fair number of Titians and other masters to gaze at closely (within a foot a distance he respected since other surly guards might set upon him and maybe the dreaded lurking second phalanx too if he got too close but close enough to see the brushstrokes that he was always interested in observing when he looked at a painting and which was emphatically not possible with milady) and to wander out in the main hallway and look at some Di Vinci’s portraits that he thought were actually better than the famous lady’s.

And that was the point that he tried to make to Laura after she came down from her high of being with twenty feet of probably the most famous painting in the Western world. Here they were at the world famous Louvre, busily trying to maneuver through the endless crowds that filled every exhibition room (and worst the blazing lights underground mall that seemingly had more customers than the museum itself as well as the restaurant areas where they had wanted to grab a quick bite to eat to fortify them for the rigors of the day’s work), and its most famous product (except maybe sweet Venus De Milo) could easily have been purchased at the museum store with less work.

Sam didn’t want to generalize (and didn’t really want to burst Laura’s euphoric balloon) but it really was funny that the painting had sunk so deeply into Western consciousness that it was rather anti-climactic in actually viewing the thing even that twenty feet away. Laura naturally poured water on Sam’s so-called theory (her expression) until they were leaving for the day (the museum really was as advertised at least a two day adventure) after viewing plenty of great Rodins, a ton of interesting Greek and Roman statuary and some Asian art in the new wing extension when she noticed a small mini-shop which had this most exquisite photograph of Mona Lisa. Better she admitted than anything that her “dinky” (her term again) digital camera could produce. Sam silently turned his head away and smiled.