Mona

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.

Everybody knows her smile, but no one knows her story: Meet the flesh-and-blood woman who became one of the most famous artistic subjects of all time—Mona Lisa. A genius immortalized her. A French king paid a fortune for her. An emperor coveted her. Every year more than nine million visitors trek to view her portrait in the Louvre. Yet while everyone recognizes her smile, hardly anyone knows her story. “Combining history, whimsical biography, personal travelogue, and love letter to Italy...Mona Lisa is an entertaining” (Publishers Weekly) book of discovery about the world’s most recognized face. Who was she? Why did the most renowned painter of her time choose her as his model? What became of her? And why does her smile enchant us still? Dianne Hales, author of La Bella Lingua, became obsessed with finding the real Mona Lisa on repeated trips to Florence. In Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered, she takes readers with her to meet Lisa’s descendants; uncover her family’s long and colorful history; and explore the neighborhoods where she lived as a girl, a wife, and a mother. In the process, we can participate in Lisa’s daily rituals; understand her personal relationships; and see, hear, smell, and taste “her” Florence. Hales brings to life a time poised between the medieval and the modern, a vibrant city bursting into fullest bloom, and a culture that redefined the possibilities of man—and of woman. Mona Lisa is “a readable and affectionate my-search-for-story for art lovers and anyone interested in glorious and gory Florence in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, and in the divine Leonardo in particular…Hales’s assiduous research has made it possible for us to know Mona Lisa just a bit, enough to wonder if this otherwise ordinary Florentine housewife could ever have imagined her portrait enchanting millions for centuries” (USATODAY.com).

Read this book and the world's most famous image will never look the same again. For the world's greatest cultural icon still has secrets to reveal - not the silly secrets that the 'Leonardo loonies' continue to advance, but previously unknown facts about the lives of Leonardo, his father, Lisa Gherardini, the subject of the portrait, and her husband Francesco del Giocondo. From this factual beginning we see how the painting metamorphosed into a 'universal picture' that became the prime vehicle for Leonardo's prodigious knowledge of the human and natural worlds. We learn about the new money of the ambitious merchant who married into the old gentry of Lisa's family. We discover Lisa's life as a wife and mother, her association with sexual scandals, and her later life in a convent. We meet, for the first time, previously undiscovered members of Leonardo's immediate family and discover new information about his early life. The tiny hill town of Vinci is placed before us, with its widespread poverty. We find out about the career and possessions of his father, a notable lawyer in Florence. The meaning of the portrait that resulted from these human circumstances is vividly illuminated though Renaissance love poetry and verses specifically dedicated to Leonardo. We come to understand how Leonardo's sciences of optics, psychology, anatomy and geology are embraced in his poetic science of art. Recent scientific examinations of the painting disclose how it evolved to assume its present appearance in Leonardo's experimental hands. Above all, we cut through the suppositions and the myths to show that the portrait is a product of real people in a real place at a real time. This is the book that brings back a sense of reality into the creation of the portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. And the actual Mona Lisa, it turns out, is even more astonishing and transcendent than the Mona Lisa of legend.

Murder Under A Full Moon Book 7 Mona Moon goes to Washington D.C. to have lunch at the White House with Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States. While in Washington, Mona wants to take in the sights but her visit is marred by the violent death of two men who were trying to procure copper contracts with Moon Enterprises. Mona is then approached by American agents to spy for the government. Mona wants no part of that as “gentlewomen do not read other’s mail.” Mona soon realizes that she and Moon Enterprises are thrust upon the world stage of countries vying for power whether she likes it or not. All Mona wants to do is run Moon Enterprises and marry Lord Farley, but events make that impossible. Mona must make a choice. Does she fulfill her duty to her country and forget Lord Farley? Or does she forge ahead and place her country in jeopardy by selling copper to whoever wants it? It looks like 1934 is going to be a challenging year for Mona. Murder Under A New Moon Book 8 Robert Farley is now a bonafide duke, and solicitors from the Duchy of Brynelleth have come to negotiate his marriage contract to Mona Moon. When the three solicitors demand that Mona relinquish Moon Enterprises and live in England full time, she threatens to give Robert back his engagement ring and call off the wedding. She says quite frankly, “I’m not going to give up one of the largest mining conglomerates in the world just so I can host dinner parties at Brynelleth for your snotty friends.” Robert, caught between the responsibilities demanded by Brynelleth and his deep love for Mona, is furious with his solicitors for not being more diplomatic. However, the matter resolves itself when the three English solicitors are caught visiting the notorious bawdy house of Belle Brezing, the most famous madam in the South. Ooops! Events are made worse when one of them turns up dead in the bed of a lady-of-the-evening. Now Mona and Robert must find the culprit before their reputations are torn to shreds by their enemies. Fast-moving events threaten to turn Mona’s world upside-down as she is confronted with seemingly impossible decisions to make. Should she marry Robert Farley or not? Murder Under a British Moon Book 9 Mona Moon travels to Merry Old England to meet Robert’s family and see Brynelleth for the first time. Hoping to make a good impression, Mona finds that she is rebuffed at every turn by Robert’s friends and even his servants. Despondent, Mona wants to return to the United States, but her trip is delayed when one of Brynelleth’s farmhands is discovered murdered. She can’t leave Robert in such a lurch and begs her good friend, Lady Alice Nithercott, to help her find the culprit. Mona discovers she and Lady Alice poke the wrong person and now he is out for blood—Mona’s blood!