Date: 01-04-1990
Owning Institution: Louvre
Publication:     The Independent 1987 - 1999  
Subject:   16th Century    

THE HUSHED galleries of the international art world will be filled with sound and fury tomorrow when the world's best-loved painting, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, is rehung after extensive cleaning minus its most famous attribute - the enigmatic half-smile on the face of its sitter, which has perplexed and enchanted generations of admirers.

The changed Mona Lisa returns to the Salle d'Etat tomorrow after six months in the care of restoration experts. The Independent on Sunday was allowed an exclusive preview of the painting after last week's re-port on the similarly controversial restoration of Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

As our photographs reveal, the Mona Lisa no longer looks amused, but rather thoughtful and preoccu-pied. There is even, perhaps, the trace of a scowl. Otherwise the painting is substantially unchanged, though the colours have been brightened by removing the many layers of varnish applied to the canvas over the centuries.

Restoration of the painting has been a closely guarded secret for several months. Only a handful of the museum's most senior staff were kept informed of its progress, though the smile was erased shortly before Christmas.

Two disgruntled members of staff are known to have already resigned in protest. ''Elle ne sourie plus, nous non plus,'' they said yesterday (''She is not smiling; neither are we'').

The restoration work was apparently supervised by the Louvre's most expert conservators. A spokesman for the museum yesterday said: ''Cleaning revealed considerable overpainting in the area around the sitter's mouth which was deemed to have been added to the picture at least 100 years after it left Leonardo da Vinci's studio.'' He added that the overpainting was removed ''after extensive consultation with the world's leading authorities on Leonardo''.

But several such experts were unaware yesterday of the restoration being contemplated, let alone carried out. They included Professor Nicholas Penny, the National Gallery's Keeper of Italian Renaissance Paintings, and Martin Kemp, organiser of last year's Leonardo show at the Hayward Gallery on London's South Bank.

Many art historians dispute the conservators' contention that the smile was added after Leonardo's death in 1519. Giorgio Vasari mentions the smile in his life of the painter, written in 1550. He said Leonardo employed ''singers and musicians or jesters'' to keep the sitter ''full of merriment''.

Before now, the Mona Lisa had never been cleaned. But there was a growing lobby within the art world in favour of cleaning, mainly because the painting was partially obscured by discoloured layers of varnish.

Pierre Rosenberg, the museum's director, last year said the picture was ''filthy dirty''. But he added: ''The Mona Lisa is such a sacrosanct image that to touch it would create a national scandal.'' The reasons for his change of heart are not known, and he was unavailable for comment yesterday.

This is not the first time that the Mona Lisa has caused a sensation. When she was stolen from the Lou-vre in 1911, the French nation went into mourning and a national holiday was declared on her recovery.

In 1956, a young Bolivian visitor to the museum hurled a rock at her, causing minor damage and prompting the authorities to house her in the bulletproof-glass case she occupies today.

The authorities at the Louvre, nervous about public reaction when the restored painting is revealed to-morrow, have asked for special police guards at the museum.