Last month I posted to the archaeology newsgroups some observations about the Khafre Pyramid and the sun at the summer solstice this year. This was part of an experiment, to see what the response of the "scientific" community would be when a known "kook" presented physical evidence that it was built as a solar monument. The result was predictable as the hyenas who inhabit usenet, (often to the detriment of their careers and personal relationships) immediately set to work to prove me wrong. This, I was later told, was science in action and that far from being displeased with such a response, I should be grateful that my ideas had elicited such interest. In reply to this interesting observation, I posted the following little parable for our times.
'There was once a busy curator of the National Portrait Gallery who was beset with financial worries. On the one hand he wanted to do the best he could for his visitors and staff and on the other he was faced with dwindling resources. The government would not allow him to levy an entrance charge, fearful that this might upset voters but at the same time they would not increase his grants either. As a result he knew he would either have to lay off staff and scale down his operations or look to other ways of raising money. And this is what he decided he must do.
A quick visit to the gallery's shop revealed that sales were not what they might be. He soon discovered that for every hundred people passing through the turnstiles, only ten made any purchase at all and nine of these were for postcards on which there was very little profit. It therefore became obvious that if the gallery were to survive, sales of higher value-added goods needed to be increased. A further check on inventory and margins revealed that their most profitable lines of merchandise were posters. For as the gallery had a monopoly on the use of its pictures, within certain limits they could charge what they liked. The only problem was that the posters were not selling in any numbers. Closer inspection of the stock revealed why: nearly all of the pictures in the gallery were of people who were grumpy. Thus though the public were willing to come in from the rain to admire the portraits and even passed favourable comment on the way they were displayed, they were reluctant to have such miseries gracing their own living room walls.
The curator thought long and hard about this problem before hitting on a practical solution. The posters, he reasoned, were only prints and these days these were prepared from computer generated scans. It should, therefore, be possible to "cheer-up" his portraits before they were printed, so that they smiled instead of scowled. As the colour balance on the posters was nearly always several shades out anyway, and compared with the originals, most of the fine detail was lost, his little deception would hardly be noticed. In the broad scale of things he could be forgiven, for he would at least be giving people the option of buying something of value: posters that didn't make them depressed each time they looked at them.
Following this line of thought the curator decided to take a survey. He asked the first thousand people who came into the gallery on a Monday afternoon to fill in a questionaire. Cunningly hidden after a dozen other questions concerning their opinion of the state of the gallery's toilets and its wheel-chair access was the one he was really interested in. What single portrait in the world did they think had the best smile? Leaving out the crude, the rude and lewd the unanimous answer was, of course, Leonardo's "Mona Lisa".
Fortunately the fact that this portrait didn't hang in his gallery didn't matter. At short notice he was able to arrange a joint exhibition with the Louvre whereby each would borrow several of the other's pictures for a month and put on a special, temporary display. Thus in exchange for a clutch of Tudor and Stuart kings he was able to get his hands on the Mona Lisa, with a bonus of one or two Napoleons thrown in for good measure.
Having thus obtained the painting of his choice, he now called in a local, scientific expert, who was asked, under oaths of secrecy, to examine the Mona Lisa in the greatest detail. Without damaging the portrait in any way, this expert was to find out the secret of her smile and to turn this into a 'Bezier curve' that could be interpreted by a computer graphics package. In this way, he hoped, the enigma of the Mona Lisa would not only be completely understood but would be reproducible on any poster he chose. No longer would "The Laughing Cavalier" dominate the sales charts, his currently unassailable place would be challenged by "The Grinning James II", "The Chortling Queen Elizabeth I" and even "The Guffawing Malcolm Muggeridge".
The computer expert smuggled The Mona Lisa out of the back of the museum and into his waiting Volvo. He tore up the Charing Cross Road, along the Tottenham Court Road and soon found himself on the A10. Within two hours of leaving the gallery he was in his beloved Cambridge laboratory with the painting unwrapped and waiting for analysis. However, unbeknownst to the curator the expert had never liked the Mona Lisa. Even touching the picture made him feel dirty,as he had heard that Leonardo might have been gay. Truth be told, he had, in fact, only taken on the job because he was short of money and anyway he wanted to try out his new spectrograph. With this he now began to analyse the pigments in the paint and to assay the exact concentrations of each as used by Leonardo. With another expensive machine, a scanning laser, he was able to follow exactly the strokes of Leonardo's brush, and reproduce as an algorithm the curve of Lisa's lips.
It quickly became very obvious to him that far from being a masterpiece, this was a singularly amateurish piece. For one thing the mouth was assymetrical and the lips were not all of the same shade of pink. It was clear to him that were the curator to put this smile on all the Museum's posters, not only would they be imposters but he would sacrificing his own integrity in the process. No! there was nothing else for it, he would have to write a knocking report. He would explain to the curator that Leonardo was clearly a kook and his Mona Lisa was not to be taken at face value. It was, in fact, no more than a daub and not worth the canvass it was painted on.In any caase, in his mind's eye he could not help but compare her unfavourably with another smiling portrait he had himself long admired: Goya's "Maja". Just the thought of that masterpiece was enough to send tingles down his spine.
With his conscience clear—now that he was sure of his real mission, he set about his task. Whistling to himself as he typed lightly on his keyboard, he set about demolishing the myth of Leonardo.
"Dear Sir", he began, "It is with a heavy heart that I have to tell you that the result of your opinion poll was flawed. This is scarcely surprising as the common people who come into your gallery are not to be trusted on such subtle matters as what constitutes good art. It is not their fault, of course, for how could it be otherwise? They are not scientists and they do not have the benefit of the sophisticated equipment at my disposal. However, by careful analysis of the pigments used and by differential, spectrometric analysis of the brush-strokes, I have reached the conclusion that Leonardo, far from being the consumate artist he is is taken for, was in reality a phoney. Not only is the head of his Mona Lisa out of proportion with her shoulders but her "wry" smile, which some people mistakenly term "enigmatic" is in fact the result of an imperfectly executed Cupid's Bow. No woman has ever had a mouth such as that and one must inevitably conclude from this that Leonardo was either not paying proper attention to his model or he was incapable of putting onto canvass what was before his very eyes. I would therefore urge you not to put this scientifically innaccurate smile onto the faces of your other portraits. The result would more likely be a smirk than a smile and could only lead to embarrassment. On the other hand, if you still wish to go down this path, then may I suggest that you take as your model Goya's ravishing "Maja". Put her smile on Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia and you will be selling more posters than you can print.
I remain sir,
Yours humbly, etc.etc......."
The curator read this letter with interest. He could see the expert's point that Leonardo was not as skilled as many assumed and that, frankly, his brush-work left much to be desired. However, the thought of Elizabeth of Bohemia, (still worse Elizabeth the Queen Mother!) nude like the Maja, filled him with alarm. True he might sell a few more posters but in doing so he could surely say good-bye to a knighthood. Reluctantly, therefore, he gave up his plan to put smiles on his portraits and sent the Mona Lisa back to Paris.
That is why when you go to the National Portrait Gallery today the posters are as glum as ever. However, all was not lost as far as the staff were concerned, for instead he built a new coffee bar in the basement. And very good it is too.'
Copyright © 2000 Adrian G Gilbert