I am Joconde

huile sur toile, 50 x 100 cm. Coll particulière

“When, by prefectural decree, we were confused, confiscated, and confined in expert response to a virus, I decided to start a painting that would take me some time. The journey around my room, I do it with a brush. Unable to paint the Mona Lisa since Leonardo da Vinci has already done it, I had to paint what she sees. I slipped into the skin of the famous smile (which is not lacking in a hint of skeptical irony) and I looked. Here’s what I saw. The real difficulty was painting The Wedding at Cana. Paul Veronese must have also experienced a confinement because he put as many people in these Wedding festivities as in front of the Mona Lisa. All these little characters who are looking, leaning, or climbing the curtains, Paul had a good time. It seems that he had stipulated in the contract for the painting that there would be a maximum number of ‘figures.’ I needed three-haired brushes to find expressions so far in fly specks! It was funny. In the end, this painting, as wide as a panorama, belongs to friends who couldn’t resist living with it.”