The woman in Leonardo da Vinci's work gazes out from the canvas with a quiet serenity. But what lies behind the famous smile? Shrouded in mystery, the Mona Lisa has attracted more speculation and questioning than any other work of art ever created. This work provides an aide memoire of the world's most famous painting. The full-page colour plates portray the Mona Lisa in close-up photographs, while Serge Bramly, the author, explores its shadowy history and the fascination the painting has engendered.
William Gibson, author of the extraordinary multiaward-winning novel Neuromancer, has written his most brilliant and thrilling work to date . . .The Mona Lisa Overdrive. Enter Gibson's unique world—lyric and mechanical, sensual and violent, sobering and exciting—where multinational corporations and high tech outlaws vie for power, traveling into the computer-generated universe known as cyberspace. Into this world comes Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell. Since childhood, Angie has been able to tap into cyberspace without a computer. Now, from inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a phantom entity who has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity, plans that cannot be controlled . . . or even known. And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yazuka, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes . . . or so they think.
The book rests on the premise that the woman in the painting "Mona Lisa" is indeed the person identified in its earliest description: Lisa Gherardini (1479-1542), wife of the Florence merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Dianne Hales has followed facts from the Florence State Archives, to the squalid street where Mona Lisa was born, to the ruins of the convent where she died
After witnessing the gruesome murder of her entire family, then having to undergo years of pain and suffering, while living with the foster family from hell, Mona Lisa reluctantly accepted her awful fate in life as being the unluckiest human being alive. She thought that she finally caught a major break after falling into the arms of Gator, only to find out that he was a no-good, smooth-talking pimp, who would be sure to keep his foot deep in her ass for as long as time allowed him to. It wasn’t until she mustered up enough courage to break free from the mental shackles Gator placed upon her, then linked up with a blood thirsty, money hungry team of bandits, that she finally realizes her true purpose in life… ‘…Suck the world dry of all its riches and slaughter anyone who tried standing in her way.…’ That was until she met Shakeem, her knight and shining armor. Shakeem was just released from state Prison, and he has only one wthing on his mind …. Revenge!! After serving 3 years in one of Pennsylvania’s most dangerous penitentiaries, he realizes that the only way he’ll ever obtain true success in life is if he takes his mentor, Sonny Black’s advice and contacts his Son Redz, who just happens to be the biggest dope boy down in Memphis. Everything seems to be finally looking up for Shakeem, that is until he meets Mona Lisa …. If there was a such thing as soulmates, Shakeem was convinced that Mona Lisa was most definitely made exclusively for him. It’s as if destiny grew a pair of hands and somehow pulled these two strangers together. Come embark upon this twisted roller coaster filled with love, lies, betrayal, trauma, heartache, death, and survival. Mona Lisa is an action packed, fast paced urban thriller, with tons of twists and turns that’ll keep you guessing and holding onto your breath until the very last page.
The true story of the Mona Lisa - the people behind it, how Leonardo painted it and what it meant to him, and its fortunes in the centuries since. Read this book and the world's most famous image will never look the same again.
William Gibson continues the visionary Sprawl Trilogy that began with Neuromancer in this frighteningly probable parable of the future. A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one he’s recovering from: to get a defecting chief of R&D—and the biochip he’s perfected—out intact. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties—some of whom aren’t remotely human....
"An Atlantic senior editor presents an investigation into the lucrative quality of popularity in the 21st century to share economic insights into what makes ideas, productions and products successful, "--NoveList.
Like music, art is a universal language. Although looking at works of art is a pleasurable enough experience, to appreciate them fully requires certain skills and knowledge." --Carol Strickland, from the introduction to The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern * This heavily illustrated crash course in art history is revised and updated. This second edition of Carol Strickland's The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern offers an illustrated tutorial of prehistoric to post-modern art from cave paintings to video art installations to digital and Internet media. * Featuring succinct page-length essays, instructive sidebars, and more than 300 photographs, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern takes art history out of the realm of dreary textbooks, demystifies jargon and theory, and makes art accessible-even at a cursory reading. * From Stonehenge to the Guggenheim and from Holbein to Warhol, more than 25,000 years of art is distilled into five sections covering a little more than 200 pages.