THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, Why the Mona Lisa?

I wonder how many of the six million people who gaze upon her face every year know she was a 24 year old mother of two when she  sat for her portrait?  Her wealthy husband had been widowed twice before, and he must not have paid for the painting because he never took delivery. Instead, the artist, Leonardo Da Vinci, kept it in his saddle bags, traveled with it for fifteen years, dabbing at it off and on, seeking a perfection he never found. He said, “Art is never finished. It is only abandoned.”. But why could not this homosexual man abandon this painting of what was at the time a middle aged woman?

After DaVinci died, the painting on a poplar wood panel was inherited by his long time lover and frequent subject (above), painter Gian Giacomo Caprotti, aka Salai.  Caprotti's  heirs sold it to the King of France.  And four hundred years later it was merely inventory number 779, just another renaissance masterpiece among  six thousand other masterpieces in the  Louver....until August of 1911, when it was stolen.

“She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave.”

Walter Pafer. 1873

She was last seen hanging on the wall between Correggio's “Mystical Marriage” and Titian's “Allegory of Alfonso d'Avalos”, just after closing hour of The  Louver on Saturday 28 July, 1911. But her disappearance  was not noticed until just after seven in the morning of Tuesday, 1 August, 1911.  Msr Louis Béroud brought his easel and paints into the gallery a that hour, seeking to lampoon the masterpiece and sell his work. Instead he found only four metal support pegs where the painting should have been. After hours of increasingly frantic searching, the police were called and 60 investigators descended upon The Louver. They found the frame and protective class in a stairwell, but that was all. Some time over the previous 48 hours, the Mona Lisa had been stolen.

“Leonardo undertook to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife...."

Giorgio Vasari 1550

The panel was sawed from a poplar tree trunk, cut radially in quarters, like fire wood, and then sliced vertically. Each 30” high by 21” wide slice of yellowish wood was dried, sanded and then “sized” - primed on both sides with up to fifteen layers of resin until its finished surface was as hard and smooth as ivory . Finally a linen cloth was stretched across the panel. This entire process might take weeks, and the panels were sold, mass produced, in speciality artists' shops. Eventually, Leonardo Da Vinci picked up one of the panels at random, quickly gauged its quality, and chose it for immortality.

“She really seems to look at us and to have a mind of her own....Sometimes she seems to mock at us, and then again we seem to catch something like sadness in her smile.”

E.H. Gombrich, 1950

The robbery made headlines worldwide. They closed the Louver for a week. The museum director was forced to resign. One leading Paris magazine, “L'Illustration” pondered, “What audacious criminal, what mystified, what maniac collector, what insane lover, has committed this abduction?” And when the Louver reopened, the San Antonio Express noted “...more people gather to stare at the vacant space on the wall...than ever before had gathered there to see the picture.” Some in the heartbroken crowds left flower bouquets in memorial. The Prefect of the Paris police admitted, “The thieves -- I am inclined to think there were more than one -- got away with it, all right.” The reward offered for her return went as high as fifty thousand francs, but for two years there were no legitimate takers. She was simply, suddenly, gone..

Mona Lisa...was the epitome of beauty for so many 19th-century writers...Yet to me she is anything but, with her chipmunk cheeks, close-set eyes and depilated face.”

Laura Cummings. 2011

First he painted the background, a mixture of indistinct mountain peaks, a winding road, rivers and a bridge. It is tauntingly familiar and yet specifically no place on earth, masked by “Leonardo's smoke”, or sfumato. It was not his invention, but the Mona Lisa is its highest achievement. Nothing is clearly seen, nothing has definitive edges. Only after the backdrop was as nearly perfect as he could make it, did Leonardo placed La Mona center stage. My Lady Lisa dominates the frame, sitting in a chair, its left arm supporting her's and separating us from her. Her right arm is laid across her stomach, its hand rests on her left wrist. She wears no jewelry, no makeup, no lipstick. She is dressed as befitted a wealthy Florentine lady. Her eyes look at you directly, seem to follow you about the room, and project...calm self assurance.. challenge...or inquiring. Her suggestion of a smile fades at the corners, her lips blending softly into the flesh; sfumato..

“You should make your portrait at the hour of the fall of the evening when it is cloudy or misty, for the light then is perfect.”

Leonardo Di Vinci

The myth of a wealthy eccentric paying millions for a stolen masterpiece to keep it hidden in his mountain top mansion is far older than the Mona Lisa. But no confirmed examples of such a theft have ever come to light. Another myth is that the art may be used as currency in an illegal trade. But eventually such ersatz wealth has to be converted to cash, and, again, no such examples have ever surfaced. Most stolen paintings not recovered by police are sold back to the museums from which they are taken. And those that are not returned have probably been destroyed when the frustrated thieves came to the alarming realization that art is about illusion, and either buying or stealing art is all about being fooled.

“...she does not appear to be painted, but truly of flesh and blood. On looking closely at the pit of her throat, one could swear that the pulses were beating.”

Geggio Vasari

The “audacious" criminal mastermind walked into a Florence, Italy commercial art gallery two years later, on Wednesday, 10 November, 1913. His name was Vincenzo Perugia (above) and he calmly told the owner that he had Mona Lisa in his hotel room. He was offering it for a half million lire. The quick thinking dealer agreed to the price, but said he first had to have the painting examined by an expert.

The next morning the dealer and the expert watched in amazement as Vincenzo pulled a battered trunk out from under his bed in the Hotel Tripoli-Italia (above). Vincenzo opened the trunk and removed some underwear, plastering tools, a pair of pliers, a smock, paint brushes, old shoes and a mandolin. And just as the art dealer was about to storm out in anger, Vincenzo lifted up a false bottom and revealed, wrapped in red silk, the Mona Lisa. Scrawled on the back of the panel was the magic inventory number, “779”. 

Vincenzo claimed he stole the Mona Lisa so he could "return" it to its Italy. despite the fact no such nation existed when Leonardo painted it, and he kept it in his Paris apartment for 2 years. Still most Italians saw the theft as an act of patriotism, and Vincenzo served just six months in prison. 

While the thief was a guest of the state,  "La Gioconda" made a grand tour of Italy (above), which greatly increased her celebrity status.

And then in January of 1914, The Lady was returned to The  Louver (above).  She had left a painting. She returned an icon. It was the classic tale of the local girl who leaves home to become a media star.     

“Do you smile to tempt a lover Mona Lisa, Or is it your way to hide a broken heart? Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep. They just lie there and they die there. Are you warm, are you real Mona Lisa. Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?”

Ray Evens, Jay Livingston 1950

Art is an impersonation. Pigments suspended in oils give the impression of color, and by the clever combination of colors a representation of three dimensional reality can be offered. But it is obviously not reality. You can only be fooled if you wish to be fooled, An artist is a tactician in fraud, and technique is the methodology of his or her lies. Thus, fraud has been art's handmaiden from the instant of creation. And art shares this characteristic with politics and economics and history – you can be fooled only if you are willing to be fooled.

“I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

Her real name was Lisa Gherardini. At 16 she married Francesco del Giocondo. Leonardo and his lover Giacomo Caprotti referred to the painting with joke. The pair referred to her as La Gioconda, the feminine version of the husband's last name and the lady's disposition – in French, La Jocunde – means jovial. Francesco died of the plague in 1538. Lisa followed her husband in death on 15 July,  1542. She was 63. She was buried in the convent of St. Ursula in Florence.  On 19 May, 2011, archaeologists reopened what they believed was Lisa's grave. But no skull was ever found, and attempts to match her DNA with those from her children's graves was frustrated by 500 years of repeated flooding by the River Arno. So we may never be able to gaze upon the face that inspired Leonardo di Vinci to create the single most famous and iconic piece of art in history, a painting that was always a masterpiece, but which became iconic only after it was stolen.

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COMET Chapter Seven - Old Accidents

I invite you to watch as the brazen brown and yellow aircraft designated “dash 80” slowly begins it's takeoff roll down runway 15/33. The four Pratt and Whitney turbojet engines, individually suspended below the 35 degree sweptback wings, roar as they produce 44,000 pounds of thrust. At 120 miles per hour pilot Alvin “Tex” Johnson firmly pulls back on the control column, and 200,000 pounds of aluminum alloy, wires, rubber tubing and ambitions float off the asphalt. It is 2:14 on Thursday afternoon of 15 July, 1954. The air above Lake Seattle is populated with puffy white clouds. And as the twin four-wheeled bogie tricycle gear of Dash 80 fold neatly into the underbelly, the grounded Comet jet transport is about to become obsolete. When he landed, 2 ½ hours later, “Tex” said, “She flew like a bird. Only faster.”

Douglas had dominated commercial aviation market since 1933, with their DC 3 (above) family of piston engine passenger planes. 

 Boeing survived thanks to their military contracts -  beginning with 17,000 B-17's built between 1935 and 1945. 

This was followed by almost 4,000 B-29 SuperFortereses built between 1942 and 1945.

Then Boeing built 2,000 swept wing B-47 Strato-jets between 1948 and 1963.

 Finally, beginning in 1951, Boeing supplied the U.S.A.F with 744 swept wing B-52 StratoFortress, still flying more than 60 years later.

So, when Bill Allen, president of Boeing Aircraft Company, saw the de Havilland Comet at the 1949 Farnborough Air Show (above), he was not impressed. But what the Comet high lighted to the Boeing engineers was that jet transports promised speed and reliability for anything you could fit in the pressure hull.

The United States Army Air Corps had been experimenting with mid-air refueling since 1927. Developments were slow, but by 1948 the USAF had two squadrons of beefed up double body B-29's Tankers, which Boeing initially called the 367s and which the U.S. Army relabeled the B-50 (above)

The problem was the jet bombers could not comfortably fly slow enough without stalling to be serviced by these piston driven gas tanks.  Also, at higher altitudes where the B-50's labored, the air was “smoother”, making refueling easier. Obviously the Air Force was going to need a jet powered tanker. And that was Boeing's initial justification to nervous investors when, in 1952 Allen asked them to risk 25% of Boeing's capital, some $16 million, to developing a jet tanker. But carrying fuel was only part of Boeing's idea.

Boeing labeled their new aircraft Project 367-80. Eventually it became known simply as the Dash 80. It was big - 128 feet long as opposed to the 93 foot long Comet – 130 foot wingspan to 115 feet for the Comet, and a wing area of 2,400 square feet to 2,015 square feet for the Comet. All that extra wing space, devoted entirely to fuel, gave the Dash 80 a range of 3,530 miles to the Comet's 1,500. 

The plane was so big a passenger version was projected to carry at least 140 seats, five abreast, compared to the Comet's 43 seats at two abreast, thus reducing the operating cost to 25 cents per seat-mile for every gallon of kerosene the four engines burned. Not to mention, the Dash 80 could cruise 100 mile per hour faster than the Comet. It looked like democracy with wings.

Boeing swept the wings of the Dash 80 back to 35 degrees, which they knew would be stable because that was the same angle as the wings on their bombers. And they avoided new engine development by using the same engines used in the bombers, and slung them beneath the wings for easy maintenance, and to free up wing space for fuel, just like the bombers. All of this would reduce the need to retool when and if the various versions of the plane went into production.

Boeing also learned from the well publicized crashes on Comet take offs by designing forward and rear facing extensions (flaps, tabs, ailerons and spoilers) on the swept wings of the Dash 80 (above). These allowed the big bird to stay in the air at speeds as low as 80 miles per hour. To allow passenger jet to use existing airfields of 7,000 feet, clam shell thrust reversers were included, to slow the jet from the landing speed of 150 miles per hour to dead stop within 6,000 feet.

However, the Dash 80 was neither a tanker nor a passenger plane. It was a test bed for both. That did not matter, it seemed, because almost before the 2 ½ hour maiden flight had landed, the Army ordered 29 of the new, yet as un-built planes to be labeled the “K” (meaning tanker) and “C” (meaning transport) -135 (above).  Another 250 KC-135's were quickly added to the order, the planes first reaching service in August of 1955.

The airlines, however, showed little interest, in part because 1954 was a recession year, but also because the disasters of the Comet were still fresh in the public mind. Few seemed eager to risk their lives on a passenger jet. So the Dash 80 flew on, amassing data to improve the design.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, 1 February, 1955, the the British Civil Aircraft Court of Inquiry into the crashes of Comet Yoke Peter and Yoke Yoke was issued by the Royal Aircraft Establishment. The fault, they had determined, was “...metal fatigue, caused by the repeated pressurization and de-pressurization exacerbated by the thin aluminum alloy skin...” and the squared off windows which intensified pressures at the corners.

De Havilland responded with a public statement. "Now that the danger of high level fatigue in pressure cabins has been generally appreciated, de Havillands will take adequate measures...we propose to use thicker gauge materials...and to strengthen and redesign windows and cut outs and so lower the general stress to a level...(which) will not constitute a danger.” The company immediately began the work, but it would be 3 years before the redesigned Comet 4 could re-enter commercial service.

It was not until 2015, when the 50 years of silence required by the British government Secrets Act had expired that the full truth of the Comet hull failures was revelled. Said the originally redacted report, “...metal fatigue, attributed to raised stress at the squared-off window corners, actually had another cause....the structure had been designed to be bonded – glued, in fact – by...the Redux process...” 

However, “...During production...de Havilland chief designer, R.E. Bishop (above)... decided that these areas should...be reinforced...by normal aircraft riveting...It was this 'belt and braces' riveting...that caused the failures. The cracks emanated from the rivet holes in the corner area – not from the material in the corner structure itself.”

But it was Tex Johnson (above), the Boeing test pilot,  who drove the final nail in the Comet coffin. 

The stage was the annual Gold Cup hydroplane races to be held on Saturday 6 August, 1955 - light high speed boats powered by air craft engines, racing at 80 to 90 miles an hour across the surface of the water and throwing 30 foot high rooster tails behind them. Viewed by perhaps 200,000 spectators from the bluffs above Lake Washington, in 1955 for the first time the event was even broadcast on live television.

That same week, The International Air Transport Association and the Society of Aeronautical Engineers were both holding their conventions in Seattle. So Bill Allen invited a large number of aviation industry folks to attend the races, and had coordinated with the Dash – 80 team to do a fly by.  That was all Tex Johnson was supposed to do - fly by.

But Tex had heard that Douglas aircraft, which had started a crash program to build their own slighter smaller and slightly slower jet passenger plane, the DC 8 (above), was telling potential customers that the Boeing jet was unstable. 

Tex (above left) felt obliged to prove the critics wrong.  As the Dash 80 was in route to Lake Washington, he told his co—pilot Jim Gannet (above, right) , “Hey Jim, I'm going to roll this airplane over the Gold Cup." Gannet suggested if he did, Jim Allen would fire him.

Johnson then steered the big jet down to 500 feet for the fly-by east bound. And as he passed the spectators, Tex pulled up slightly and slipped the aircraft into a gentle roll to the right, 360 degrees - a perfect barrel roll. (Barrel Roll).  It was perfectly safe, according to “Tex”. “The airplane does not recognize attitude,” he later explained, “providing a maneuver is conducted at one G...The barrel roll is a one G maneuver and quite impressive, but the airplane never knows it’s inverted.” 

Then, on the west bound pass, he did it again.  During the second roll the flight engineer, the only other person on board, snapped a photo of the Bill Allen's $16 million gamble upside down less than a thousand feet above Seattle.

The gamble worked. Less than 2 months later, on 13 October, 1955, Pan American World Airlines ordered 20 of the newly designated Boeing 707 jets, to replace their cancelled Comet orders. 

The only fly in the ointment landed when Douglas upgraded the engines on their DC-8's, forcing Boeing to follow suit. That delay prevented the first 707 commercial flight until October of 1958. But by 1956 even British Overseas Airway Corporation had ordered Boeing's big jet. Until the production lines shut down in 1978, Boeing built 865 of the big 707 airplanes.

The British government remained loyal to the de Havilland Comet, and in March of 1955 British Overseas Aviation Corporation ordered 19 of the new Comet 4's (above). To extend its range, the Comet 4  had a fuel tank pod perched in each wing, and the wings themselves were bigger, as were the engines. 

On 4 October, 1958 it was a Comet 4 that flew the first jet London to New York flight, with a westbound refueling stop at Gander, Newfoundland. But the new Comets could only squeeze 99 passengers into the larger pressure cabin, and de Havilland's plane was still 50 miles per hour slower than either the Boeing 707 or the DC-8.  De Havilland sold only some 76 Comets, before production was stopped in 1964.

In 1960 de Havilland was acquired by Hawker Siddeley in a government brokered sale and the name de Havilland faded from British aviation. 

The Canadian government bought the subsidiary de Havilland Canada, and for the next 20 years produced a successful line of short take off and landing civilian aircraft. But in 1984 the conservative government of Brian Mulroney privatized the company, and in 1986 de Havilland Canada was bought by Boeing. Despite promises to Canada, Boeing closed the plant and broke up the jigs and all production equipment, and that really was the end of de Havilland.

Today, (2020) Boeing itself is reeling from their own self-engineered 737 Super Max debacle - 2 crashes and 346 dead, caused by a preventable failure  - followed by the COVID 19 pandemic which gutted air travel for an entire year.  

Boeing in 2020 seems to be facing a similar fate to the one de Havilland faced in 1954, building airplanes nobody wants to fly aboard. 

As one of the Farnborough engineers pointed out back in 1954, ‘There are rarely new accidents, just old accidents waiting for new people to have them.”

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