I’m trying to find a creative outlet. My brain is suffering from just focusing on work and doomscrolling each morning through the news and my state’s dedicated attempts to restrict my life. So I bought some cheap acrylic paints and canvas boards and I’ll post things here as I complete them. And I’ll try to throw in a quote or two from an old reference work while I’m at it.

My kid is super-obsessed with axolotls. They sometimes look like they’re coyly smiling. So I tried to combine an axolotl with one of the world’s most famous smiles. Kiddo’s alternative title for this painting is “Axolisa.”

In Milan, Leonardo [da Vinci] made his influence lasting by the founding of an Art academy. After the occupation of that city by the French, he went to Florence, where he painted the most celebrated of his easel pictures, the wonderful portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo, a Florentine lady of prominence. The “inscrutable” smile of this lady has been the subject if endless discussion, and it is said that Leonardo caused her to assume her mysterious expression by having music played during the sittings. In 1911 this priceless painting, commonly known as Mona Lisa, which is one of the glories of the Louvre, in Paris, was cut from its frame. Two years later it was recovered from the thief, an Italian, who stole it out of patriotic motives. (The World Book, 1919, Volume 10, page 6087)

The Encyclopedia Americana expands a bit on the famous theft (volume 19, page 362):

MONNA LISA, [sic] or <La Gioconda,> the famous masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci, disappeared from the Louvre in Paris 21 or 22 Aug. 1911. The picture had been taken out of the frame, which was found on a back staircase of the building. For over two years the mystery remained unsolved. On 12 Dec. 1913 it was announced that the painting had been recovered in Florence and returned to Paris. It had been stolen from the Louvre by an Italian workman named Vincenzo Perugia, who gave as his reason for the theft that he wished to retaliate on France for taking so many Italian masterpieces from Italy. On 5 June 1914 Perugia was sentenced to one year and 15 days' imprisonment with payment of costs.