The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-07
SOCIAL EVENTS OF THE EARLY AUTUMN Items of Interesting People
 Here and Elsewhere THE SOCIAL CALENDAR Mrs. E.. M. S. Houston Entertains Girls at Luncheon-Miss Me-
 Guirk Honoree-Other Topics
 of Social Interest
By MYRTLE MILES


 The theft of the Mona Lisa," which has been the sensation of the month, has recalled to the minds of many who are interested in art and literature Walter Paters famous essay on Leonardo Da Vinci, in which he describes the Lady Lisa. A bright woman who has travelled abroad and studied the da Vinci master piece in the Louvre said the other day, after referring to this description, that the rhapsody itself is sufficient to move the eye of the beholder, and that it is in her opinion greater masterpiece than the picture itself. This is Paters de- seription:
 Hers is the head upon which all the ends of the world are come and the eye lids are little weary. It Is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell. of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and ex- quisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek god desses of beautiful women of antiquity and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with ap its maladies has pascal. All the tho, .5hts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there,- in that which they have of power to refine and make express sive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambi- tion and imaginative loves, the return of h., Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the sc- crets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as St. Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of Tyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has mould ed the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands,"
 If "Giocondo'' could be as beautiful as that, one would not be surprised at the stories of people who have fallen in love with her.
 The womanswho was giving her opinion to party of veranda visitors, said: "1he years of extravagant worship of the painting and the final crowning touch given by Walter Pater, in his essay, are, in my opinion, about all there is to the picture, heretic as this may sound, and l fail to see that much has been lost ex- eept a relic. It is my firm belief that if any ordinary, healthy person with a trained eye for the beautiful in color and line, and who had never even heard of La Gioconda or Da Vinci could be found he would regard the painting as an inter- esting but rather dingy object.''
 Apropos of her opinion and the descrip- tion in question, comes the description that was placed in the hands of the New York police. It is the sane, practical opinion of a man who is telling the plain unvarnished truth about the Da Vinci painting as he sees 1t. The Pater essay is haunting in it's poetic beauty; the other, straightforward, unadorned fact. The difference, of course. is in the point of view, but for the benefit of the clever woman who so freely expressed her own opinion of the masterpiece and of others who would be interested in comparing:
 'No. 462. La Gioconda, by Leonardo da Vinci. of the Florentine school,' he says, lis better known as Mona Lisa It is half length and of life size. Mona Lisa's' complexion is pale and sallow her mouth strongly dimpled at the cor ners Her eyes wear a peculiar and cum ming expression, which is due partly to the position of the iris and partly to their raising of the lower lid. The crown of the head is covered with thin veil, from which the hairs fall in F1nglets conceal Ing the ears. The hands are delicate and well modelled, with tapering fingers, but the flesh tints generally are marred by opaque and inky shadows. The color is low in tone and there are no high lights except in the drapery. In the background is mysterious and weird looking land scape. The surface of the paint in the picture, which is executed on panel, is much cracked"