A Spanish museum Wednesday revealed an authenticated contemporary copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa found in its vaults, looking younger and more ravishing than the original, which sits in Paris' Louvre museum.

"/> A Spanish museum Wednesday revealed an authenticated contemporary copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa found in its vaults, looking younger and more ravishing than the original, which sits in Paris' Louvre museum.

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Spanish museum reveals ‘younger’ Mona Lisa

A Spanish museum Wednesday revealed an authenticated contemporary copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa found in its vaults, looking younger and more ravishing than the original, which sits in Paris' Louvre museum.

Spanish museum reveals 'younger' Mona Lisa
Screenshot El Pais newspaper

Madrid’s Prado Museum released images of the picture, which had been sitting in its vaults, showing it before and after restoration.

The pre-restoration version showed the same woman Da Vinci painted, looking younger and fresher-faced, but with the same pose and enigmatic smile.

The background was black, covered by layers of black paint that experts have now painstakingly removed.

The restored version shows the woman backed by a landscape of hills and rivers resembling that of the original masterpiece, which hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris.

According to details of experts’ findings published by the specialist British journal The Art Newspaper and the Spanish media, the work is a copy painted in Da Vinci’s studio by one of his pupils.

The Art Newspaper said the find sheds light on how the Italian master’s original was painted. It added that the woman in the famous painting looks almost middle-aged due to traces of old varnish on it.

“This sensational find will transform our understanding of the world’s most famous picture,” the journal wrote.

The museum confirmed the media reports and said it would give further details at a press conference later Wednesday.


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TOURISM

New guide to Paris museums – showing only the nudes

There are lots of guides to the visual splendours of Paris' museums and art galleries - but for those with a short attention span comes a new one, showing only nude or erotic artworks.

New guide to Paris museums - showing only the nudes
Find your way straight to the most erotic works in Paris galleries. Photo: Guiseppe Cacace/AFP

The online guides to the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay museums are produced by the porn website Pornhub and provide a list of the best erotic artworks in each museum, plus directions of how to get there – so you don’t need to waste your time looking at paintings of people in clothes.

The Classic Nudes series has been ruffling some feathers since it was posted online earlier in July, with the Uffizi museum in Florence threatening to sue. Bosses at the Louvre have said only that they are ‘dismayed’, while the Musée d’Orsay has remained silent on the subject.

The guide for the Musée d’Orsay lists 11 erotic artworks, together with a tongue-in-cheek commentary, and a location for each piece within the museum.

The Sleep by Gustave Courbet. Photo by FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP

Among the works featured are;

  • Le déjeuner sur l’herbe by Edouard Manet (1863) – which features a group having a picnic in which the woman has lost her clothes (the men remain fully dressed in three-piece suits and ties).
  • Un combat des coqs by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1846) – a nude couple watching a cock fight (that’s cockerels fighting, just to be clear).
  • L’origine du monde by Gustave Courbet (1866) – more than 150 years after it was first painted, the intimate close-up of female genitalia is still making waves. In 2019 Facebook had to pay damages to a French teacher whose account was closed when he posted a picture of the famous artwork.

The guide for the Louvre includes:

Nude young Man by Hippolyte Flandrin. Photo by KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP
  • Portrait of Madeleine by Marie Guillemine Benoist (1800) – groundbreaking in several senses, this painting is one of the few on the list by a woman, and shows a topless black woman, painted just six years after the abolition of slavery in France’s colonies. 
  • Diane sortant du bain by François Boucher (1742) – one of many paintings on the list showing women having a bath, this features the Greek goddess Diana and her favourite nymph apparently surprised by the artist in the process of drying off after a bath. 
  • Le Jeune homme nu by Hippolyte Flandrin (1835) – most of the flesh shown in both the galleries is female (because that’s the patriarchy for you) but here we have a more rare male nude, a study of a young man sitting and looking rather sad and pensive.

As is hopefully clear, the Pornhub guides are explicit in nature and not suitable for children.

Both museums, however, form a great day out for all the family and contain a lot of fully-clothed artwork too. At present both are operating reduced visitor numbers due to health rules, so advance booking to recommended.

IN DETAIL: When do France’s top tourist sites reopen?

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