No doubt someone who is more of a specialist can give you a definitive
answer, but as a "generalist" museum and gallery director for over 20
years (with paintings and conservation depts. within my services) even I
could see that the "Mona Lisa" is in a pretty dreadful condition - at
least at the "cosmetic" level, and that it would benefit from a full-scale
conservation treatment.  (I am sure it will be somewhere on the Louvre's
forward schedule though there are obviously serious public relations
problems in taking a world-famous work off display for perhaps a year or
more - as with the Uffizi's work on the "Primavera" of Botticelli a few
years back, for example.

My informed layman's guess is that the line you refer to - which is
certainly real - is probably discoloured filling and/or overpainting from
an old restoration of something like a split in the panel.  (I suspect
that the painting has never had any major treatment since its return to
the Louvre when it was recovered about 80 years ago after being stolen a
year or two earlier.)

Patrick Boylan

============================


On Wed, 23 Jul 1997, m. white wrote: (EXTRACT ONLY)

> I hope that the members of the list can help me with this question. I need
> this information for my dissertation on the virtual museum.
>
> I have noticed an imperfection, or mark, on the digital reproduction of
> the "Mona Lisa" at the "official" Louvre museum web site that is sponsored
> by the Paris institution.

## ETC. ##
>
> Are these sources using the same damaged negative (or positive) or does
> this line reproduce some mark on the "real" painting? Is this imperfection
> part of a crack or other damage?