THATMuse
a picture of the Mona Lisa

The History of the Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa is perhaps the most famous painting in the world, one of the most recognised and copied. It currently hangs in the Louvre, where it is believed that 80% of the 10.2 million visitors go specifically… Read More

Crowds photographing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Paris

Three Famous French-ish Mothers in Art History

If you scrolled through social media over the weekend, you can’t have missed that last Sunday was Mother’s Day. Or at least, over in the US (and most other countries) it was (here in the UK we celebrate… Read More

Leo’s Contemporaries

Last time we wound our way from considering the Prado and Spain in the general, to zeroing in on a contemporary replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s  Mona Lisa. In our last post we shamelessly lingered on poor Leonardo’s sex life (with the weak… Read More

The Prado’s Gioconda

The other day I touched on Spain’s Span Across Europe in the general. It’s true that Spain’s reach was just so broad that it’s hard to know what to focus on at the Prado (the royal collection reflecting the… Read More

Wine, Women and a Bed

So I’m just putting the finishing touches on a new Public THATLou; “All Things Gaul, for those who have the Gall” shall debut on, yep, you guessed it: Bastille Day! The Louvre is free on 14 juillet, yet… Read More

Leonardo’s Lover

So who painted this now famous Prado-owned La Gioconda? Fueled with personalities and possibly sordid details, it’s a fun question to examine. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) is too large a topic to address for one post…. Read More