Mona Lisa Plus

We’ve recently been to Paris and strolled along the banks of Seine, where all kinds of old stuff was being sold: postcards, posters, paintings, books.

Occasionally you stumble upon a really interesting artifact.

So we’ve spotted a brilliant version of Mona Lisa, which we named “Mona Lisa Plus” amongst ourselves. It looked so appropriate in the company of hundreds of canonical copies of Da Vinci’s work.

The “chubby” version of the original portrait anyone would immediately recognise was hanging among other works. Later we identified its author, the Colombian Fernando Botero, who is well known for his “overweighty” figurative style.

The painting (oil on canvas) was priced at € 75.

Which we found a very reasonable price for an original author work, but it was just too large for us, and the booth owner didn’t have any other variant of that painting.

After that I honestly tried to find a copy of it in souvenir stores but nobody had ever seen this work.

Then we decided to go back to the quay and make a photo of Mona Lisa Plus. Back home I’ve slightly edited the picture with Gimp (the image needed to be made a bit taller to fit the print format).

A canvas print at Albelli (20×30 cm) has cost me as little as ten euros, and the result was pretty amazing:

Just look at this beauty:

By the way, with the print Albelli has also sent me the code 19WINTER: it gives you a 40% discount on postcards and calenders and 25% for all other products. The code is valid until 31 January 2020. ■