Art-DaVinci-Mona Lisa TB

Please drop this item in rural OR Premium Member Only caches.  Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Photos in the travel bug logs are appreciated.  I will be re-post them here, where they can be seen by other cachers.

I have already released series of art-themed travel bugs based on works I have seen in person.  I will continue the series mostly including works I simply admire.  There will also be famous works or works by famous artists that I otherwise do not particularly care for, but they are….well,..famous.  My disdain extends to most Modern Art and a good amount from the Pop Art movement. 

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 –1519) was regarded by many as the prime exemplar of the "Universal Genius" or "Renaissance Man", an individual of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination."  According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote."   Marco Rosci, however, notes that while there is much speculation regarding his life and personality, his view of the world was logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unorthodox for his time.

Leonardo was born in 1452 (Old Style) in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno river in the territory of the Medici-ruled Republic of Florence.  He was the out-of-wedlock son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina, a peasant.  Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "from Vinci."  His full birth name was "Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, (son) of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci".  The inclusion of the title "ser" indicated that Leonardo's father was a gentleman.

Leonardo was, and is, renowned primarily as a painter.  Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam.  I have never understood the reverence for the Mona Lisa.  Even after seeing it in person, it holds no charm.  The painting is small and the subject is not particularly attractive.  As his portraits go, the now-missing Woman Holding an Ermine is more to my liking.

Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts. Perhaps only fifteen of his paintings have survived.   Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists rivalled only by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.