La Gioconda: The Beauty in Simplicity. The Merging of Subtle Profundity and an Absence of Complication

Okay, I know the Mona Lisa is cliche, overrated, run of the mill, overhyped and all that jazz. But let's get real, the puffery surrounding it can undeniably be justified. 
When I visited the Louvre in Paris this past summer, I scurried around the obscenely, intimidatingly massive, palace-like (it literally WAS a palace back in the day!) as if I was a mouse on crack, my mouth gaping, my eyes penetrating into each and every piece of artwork that passed by. I was on the hunt for the Mona Lisa. I tingled with exhilaration and anticipation as I zealously awaited that dropping chest titillation that tends to occur whenever something delightfully out of the ordinary occurs. I was a bloodhound in search of a gory carcass. Stomping away cravingly, frenziedly. 


I got lost countless times, proceeding to poke my neck like an ostrich into every nook and cranny possible---every gallery, hallway, etc. in order to find some kind of direction to good old Mona. After far too many aggravating minutes of darting around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off, I found the correct room. I dashed through the entryway, my eyes lingering just under the magnificent crater of a towering ceiling. 


I permitted them to drop toward the core of the room...splat. Smack dab onto Mona Lisa herself, posed just as how Leonardo Da Vinci initially drew her, sardonic, cryptic, in all her modest splendor.


I was at a loss for words, breathlessly inquiring to myself silently the story behind the legendary painting. The beautiful simplicity of it all was intoxicatingly, and paradoxically complex. 


Eons ago, the plain Lisa del Giocondo was a humble mother and wife, living a comfortable, ho-hum, middle-class life. However, even for awhile the Mona Lisa was merely a portrait Da Vinci painted just to get by. (Starving artist indeed, just like the rest of them. Don't all influential artists have to go through some kind of struggle?)


I want six kids just like Lisa too! Well give or take.  Between four and six. I should pay homage to this seemingly unsuspecting and run-of-the-mill old Italian housewife by naming my children after her children: Piero. Camilla. Andrea. Giocondo. Marietta. 


It's fascinating how such a common, lowly and perfectly unpretentious person, one who you would suspect to get lost in the shuffle every day of her life can become such a cultural, artistic icon in such a myriad of categories. 


Isn't it absolutely INSANE to think this woman is more famous, technically, than Kim Kardashian? And will be etched in people all over the world's minds far more than Kim...as much as I love her!