Should you ever visit the Louvre, be sure to enter hall
No. 6 on the second floor, to the right of the main entrance. It is not
so difficult to do: all you have to do is to be guided by a plan and follow
the stream of the hundreds of other visitors. In the hall, on the second-floor
right-wing Denon?, you will see the picture, painted by a certain half-forgotten
traveling master of arts Leonardo da Vinci, titled La Gioconda ,
also known to a few connoisseurs as Mona Lisa .
Frankly, we have become sick and tired of her throughout
our adult lives. You have seen her on dozens (if not hundreds) reproductions,
such as postcards, albums, catalogues, and slides; you also could not miss
her depicted in history schoolbooks, on billboards, posters, labels, in
caricatures, on plastic bags, T-shirts, wrappings, and on many other occasions.
Moreover, songs have been composed in her honor, which you listened to
in your salad years: one was sung by Nat King Cole, another by Aleksandr
Gradsky, and still another by Marek Grechuta. In addition, she was once
brought to the Soviet Union and shown in Moscow, with a squad of armed
motorcyclists escorting a charming inflammable container, with her inside,
to, if I am not mistaken, the Pushkin Museum. Then the empire's whole population
rushed to see her: they were coming to Moscow from every corner of the
country, by express, passenger, and freight trains, stood in a line for
12 hours in the rain, and walked in an endless flow just to approach what
they thought was eternal. But this only a digression.
Going to the Louvre, you must remember that this is one
of the world's largest museums keeping and exhibiting over 30,000 pieces
of art divided into seven big collections and that no one is destined to
pass through, see, comprehend, and commit to memory all this mass. You
must be aware that, according to psychologists, you have not more than
three hours of active attention: in the fourth hour all your senses become
totally exhausted, and further examination makes no sense other than in
terms of sport. So you should choose a three-hour itinerary, if only to
see three percent of everything available.
Suppose you are destined to visit the Louvre only once.
So you consciously reject the Middle East, Egypt, Etruria, Rome, household
art, furniture, crockery, graphics, and temporary exhibitions. You only
have a chance to see sculptures from the corner of an eye on your way to
the right-wing second floor. What you leave for yourself is painting, to
be more exact, Italian painting: a very long vaulted gallery. You should
go down this gallery in one direction, then in the opposite along the other
wall: you will have an ocean of emotions and impressions, and the very
names will make you feel the sticky sweat of a winner in this well-ventilated
hall (Fra Angelico! Piero della Francesca! Rafael! Signorelli! Giorgione!
Caravaggio! Tintoretto! Palma! Bronsino!). But, in the long run, you will
turn right to hall number six.
This hall also has many things. Suffice it to mention Marriage
at Cana by Veronese, a wall-size solid blockbuster, ten by five meters,
at a rough guess. But people bunch up in front of a different object, you
know which. You will be drawn to it also once you get into this stuffy
and narrow room (why, of all things, the air-conditioners do not work precisely
here?!). And you see great adoration. Why do all these people from all
over the world, the children of postmodern society and liberal values,
brought up in the situation of a free choice and the rejection of lasting
hierarchies, choose just this? Why do they so frantically, nervously, and
thrilled elbow their way, cameras in hand, closer to the exhibit? Are they
not satisfied with reproductions, postcards, song discs and bags, as well
as with all that has been crammed into their heads about «the eternal secret
of her smile?»
You surely guess that this is in fact the need for a cult,
the vestiges of monotheism in atheistic structures. Or, in simple words,
the desire for Something Singular, a Champion of the World.
So you push your way as hard as you can to approach closer
to the picture in search of your personal association with all this.






