The Mona Jenny

  Recently, a museum in Madrid, Spain, was doing some work restoring paintings from their basement storage. Among these paintings was one that was supposed for many years to be a much later copy of the Mona Lisa. It's background was painted in black, but when the restorative work was done they shone a certain type of light through the painting and discovered that the black paint was actually covering an entire background of some sort. What they uncovered was astonishing. It was a detailed painting replicating the original Mona Lisa background but in much greater detail and clarity. After further investigation they realized that this was most likely painted by one of Da Vinci's star pupils at the very same time Da Vinci himself was painting the Mona Lisa. So this painting, relegated for years to a museum basement, was actually a very old and precious work that revealed much more about the Mona Lisa than could ever been seen because of the aging of the Da Vinci painting. The awful black paint had actually preserved the copy perfectly. This copy will be joining the original on loan to the Louvre.

  Okay, so this is a very long intro to my blog today, but I found it to be a fascinating story on so many levels! So for Valentine's Day this year, I challenged Josh to make a card like I was going to make for fun. He's not a very sappy romantic, so I found some humour in asking him to make something sappy for me. But in usual Josh form, he went way beyond just making a regular card and put my cardboard heart card to shame. Inspired by this Mona Lisa copy story, he created, with only a few hours and some watercolor pencils, a perfect cross between the Mona Lisa's face and mine.
(Amazing and yet somewhat creepy at the same time.)

    Then, when I arrived at choir practice that night I received beautiful red carnations given to me and each choir member by another sweet choir member, as well as a vintage Bronte Sisters ( I just love them!) compendium someone was giving away, and some amazing heart cupcakes someone had baked for the tea time break. I had already had a night out with Josh the week before, so it was lovely surprise to have such a beautiful, romantic evening this night as well. It's nice when things happen like that, so easy, naturally and unexpected.

The Mona Jenny has proudly joined other portraits
on our portrait wall of other talented family portraits
by other family members.