Raphael's Mona Lisa

A first correspondence between Raphael's painting and Leonardo's famous painting is that both painters kept them with them throughout their lives, without ever giving them up to anyone.

The measurements are almost the same: 87 by 63 cm for the Fornarina and 77 by 53 for the Mona Lisa.

The fascination of the two portraits and the absence of certain information have created a dense list of interpretations, often untrue, and fueled legends.

Raphael painted “La fornarina” around 1520 and signed it by writing his name on the woman's bracelet.

The very title of the painting appears only towards the eighteenth century and derives from an engraving on a print from 1770.

The favored hypothesis tells us about Margherita Luti, daughter of a baker from Trastevere, who would have been loved by Raphael and therefore would have posed for the painting.

A careful study by the art historian Giuliano Pisano, however, indicates how the word "fornarina" as it derives from "oven", has been, since ancient Greek times, a popular synonym of the female organ. For this reason the subject should be the celebration of ideal beauty as opposed to the procreative and earthly woman.

Raphael would have created a theme by Titian, "Sacred Love and Profane Love" on two separate paintings: "the fornarina" on one side and "the veiled woman" on the other.

It's an interpretation like any other.

We are left with an image of fresh immediacy, with a discreet and sweet sensuality created by the great Maestro with such skill that confirms once again, if necessary, the unrivaled talent of Raffaello Sanzio.

Andrea Giuseppe Fadini