Did Mona Lisa Suffer From High Cholesterol.doc

Did Mona Lisa Suffer From High Cholesterol?Mona Lisas beauty comes as much from what shes hiding as what she reveals. Who is she looking at? What has triggered that famous smile? Is she even smiling at all? Art historians have deduced in that singularly mysterious visage everything from a cross-dressing self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci to the knowing glance of an unfaithful wife to the satisfied pride of a pregnant woman. Bob Dylan once even offered up a very 20th century American conclusion on the matter: Mona Lisa mustve had the highway blues. A Sicilian professor of pathological anatomy has come up with the latest and what is arguably the least poetic explanation imaginable for why Mona Lisa looks the way she does: high cholesterol. Vito Franco of the University of Palermo has spent his spare time applying his medical expertise to the study of famous subjects of Renaissance artworks. And in the first formal collection of his findings, Franco has concluded that the woman who Italians call La Gioconda suffered from xanthelasma, the accumulation of cholesterol just under the skin. Franco told the La Stampa daily this week that he spotted clear signs of the condition around Mona Lisas left eye, as well as evidence of a lipoma, a fatty tissue tumor, on her right hand. Hardly a flattering diagnosis for one of historys most enchanting beauties. But Franco, who presented his findings at a European congress on human pathology in Florence last fall, says his objective is not to bleed the lyricism out of art but rather to render the lives of the subjects more vivid. Illness is part of the body, not a metaphysic or supernatural dimension, Vito told La Stampa. And so in revealing their physicality, the people depicted expose their human vulnerability independently from our awareness of the authors of the work. Among the some 100 works hes studied, which also include Egyptian sculptures and contemporary paintings, Franco is particularly fond of exploring those depicting ailments during the European Renaissance. Among his conclusions: the Spanish child, Margarita, in Diego Velzquezs Las Meninas likely suffered from both a thyroid condition known as goiter and the genetic disorder linked to premature puberty, McCune-Albright syndrome. The unusually long thin fingers of the young nobleman in Sandro Botticellis Portrait of a Young Man, which is displayed at the National Gallery in Washington, indicates that the subject suffered from Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder of the connective tissue. The professor even performed a checkup on the master of the masters, Michelangelo, who is depicted in the foreground of Raphaels The School of Athens with swollen knees, which Franco says were likely caused by kidney stones. Luisa Dolza, a Paris-based historian of science, doesnt see much new ground being broken by Franco, in either the study of art or medicine. Still, she acknowledges that the project is useful for making the public aware of what was happening during the Renaissance, when the great minds threw themselves into different fields in the pursuit of both truth and beauty. Something new was happening then, where if the wife of the emperor was ugly, she was depicted as ugly. This was no photo-shop, said Dolza, an expert in Renaissance-era technology. These painters, Leonardo and Michelangelo, studied anatomy and illnesses. They loved to represent humans with all their faults. As for the Mona Lisa in particular, that enigmatic face will keep prompting new theories from its admirers. Over the past decade, American neurological researchers have suggested that her seemingly disappearing smile is an effect caused by the way the brain processes certain elements of light. There is another possibility that may be hard to disprove: La Giocondas face is itself a mirror on which the story of our own lives is reflected. Does it make you smile? Sort of. 蒙娜丽莎是患高胆固醇吗?蒙娜丽莎的美来为她的躲她揭示。她是谁?什么引发了那位著名的微笑吗?她甚至笑吗?艺术史学家,推导了异乎寻常的神秘的面貌都从一个异性达芬奇的自画像,不知道的妻子满意的骄傲的孕妇。鲍勃迪伦一旦甚至提供了一个非常20世纪美国的结论对这件事:“蒙娜丽莎必须有高速公路的布鲁斯。”西西里教授有淋巴结肿大想出了最新的,什么是最不诗意的解释为什麽想像的方式蒙娜丽莎看起来她:高胆固醇的含量。近日佛朗哥大学的巴勒莫已经利用业余时间他的医疗技术应用的研究对象的文艺复兴时期著名艺术品。在第一个正式的收集自己的发现,弗兰克已经断定,女人意大利人称为“蓝Gioconda”遭受xanthelasma、胆固醇积累的只是皮肤下。弗兰克告诉他这个星期,他发现明显标志的条件蒙娜丽莎的左眼周围的证据,以及脂肪瘤,脂肪组织肿瘤,在她的右手里。几乎没有伤的人。谄媚的诊断史上最迷人的美女。但是,他发现了佛朗哥在欧洲国会对人类病理学在佛罗伦萨去年秋天,说他的目标是不流血的抒情的艺术,而是使生活更生动的科目。“疾病是身体的一部份,而不是一个形而上学或超自然的尺寸,他说:“Vito)。,所以在揭示了他们身体的人,让人类的漏洞描述从我们的意识的独立作者的工作。”在他的作品进行一些百,其中也包括埃及雕塑和现代绘画,弗兰克是特别喜欢探索那些刻画疾病在欧洲文艺复兴。在他的结论:西班牙的孩子,玛格丽塔,在维拉斯奎兹的拉斯维加斯可能遭受都Meninas甲状腺状况被称为甲状腺肿大和遗传性疾病有关,McCune-Albright过早的青春期综合症。不寻常的细长手指的年轻的贵族在山波提切利的肖像的年轻人,表现在国家美术馆在华盛顿,表明患有马凡综合征的主题,一种遗传性疾病的结缔组织。那位教授进行了检查,甚至在主人的主人,米开朗基罗,图中所示的拉斐尔的学校中具有广阔的应用前景和肿胀的膝盖的雅典,说可能是造成弗兰科肾结石。总部设在巴黎的Dolza科学的历史学家,没看见许多新地面被打破,无论是在弗朗艺术研究或药物。尽管如此,她承认,这个项目是为公众意识到有用的发生了什麽事在文艺复兴时期,当伟大的头脑了不同领域的追求真理和美丽。“新东西的地方正