Mona Lisa Cargo Cult

She is a Sphinx whose enigma no Oedipus has come to solve; perhaps that’s the secret to her smile. But if we stare too long, we may start to suspect she’s just pretending. Vasari fell victim to a hallucination: he thought he’d seen her pulse; others have described her as provocative. She has been stripped bare, insulted, and slashed. As a woman, she is sublimely insipid: no one would ever dream of courting her, but over the years a certain yearning to attain the unattainable has meant that copies have piled up. A crowded community of Giocondas has taken shape: paintings of unremarkable young women who are devoid of mystery, mediocre imitators of a dazzling star. Recently, however, some of them have fetched very impressive prices at multimillion-dollar auctions. If any of our readers own a pseudo-Mona Lisa, now may be the time to sell.