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Showing posts with the label Mona Lisa

Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...

Secrets of the Paintings

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I find historical mysteries very interesting. Recently, I read the book about the search for the grave of Richard III (review here some days ago).  For breakfast this morning, I read an Annex to the Swedish evening paper Aftonbladet, which my parents brought on their last trip. It is about secrets to be discovered in famous paintings. Or at least what people think they can read out of it. The most famous painter with supposedly a lot of hidden messages in his painting is Leonardo Da Vinci. It was made really famous with Dan Brown' The Da Vinci code but also in other books. Let's have a look at some of the paintings mentioned. We start with the most famous painter of them all: Leonardo da Vinci The Last Supper  It was painted between 1495-98 and ordered by Ludovico Sforza and his wife Beatrice d'Este ( Duchess of Milan as reviewed here ). It was painted directly on the wall in the Monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Leonardo used a new 'dry' technique r...