Is the Mona Lisa just masking?
Great art is supposed to inspire emotion and conversation. The most famous and most viewed painting in the world is the Mona Lisa. While this painting is not overly large, it has inspired books, articles, movies, attempted art thefts, and a barrage of heated debates all over the world.
She features heavily in The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. This weekend, my family snuggled up and we watched Daniel Craig’s very quirky, neurodivergent, southern detective solve the case. One of the characters, mixed up in this modern day who-done-it, is a narcissistic billionaire who wants to be remembered in the same breath as the Mona Lisa. Set during the Covid bubble, he convinces the Louvre to loan him the Mona Lisa for an obscene amount of money. Throughout a large portion of the movie there is a security protocol triggered for the painting and a piece of reinforced glass slides up for a few minutes and then disengages. You see the painting over and over, every time the protocol engages. The sound of the glass becomes like a heartbeat. You hear and see it so much that many people would stop paying attention to it altogether and that is the entire point of this particular action.
Sitting in my big comfy chair, seeing flashes of the Mona Lisa’s face, my mind did what many neurodivergent brains do. It started filling in the slow parts of the movie with interconnected thoughts and questions. Why do people debate whether she is smiling or not? Aren’t they missing the bigger picture? And that is when I realized something.
The Mona Lisa’s facial expression is such a hotbed for debate because DaVinci has depicted someone masking. He painted this woman as calm and complacent. There is the absolute barest hint of personality in her expression, until you get to her eyes. The eyes are what give away even the most expert masker if anyone chooses to pay attention. But how many people had to look at this painting before someone finally recognized there was more going on than just a calm, beautiful woman? How many people just see the painting and don’t realize there is something off?
As someone who was diagnosed late in life with Autism, ADHD, and OCD I know about living a masked life. I know how to appear calm and complacent. I know exactly how to present myself to fit into whatever mold is needed to survive. I also know how it feels when you drop the mask and how shocked and uneasy it can make those around you. Honestly, it takes a ton of bravery to drop a mask you have held onto for so long because the entire reason you were wearing it in the beginning was safety. So you start existing in this weird purgatory of masking and unmasking. You spend a lot of time assessing who is safe and who is not. Who can you trust your real self with?
I look at this painting and see someone who is a master at hiding. I see a woman who knows how to walk that line between being too much and not enough. Even though she is painted with direct eye contact, it is not threatening. There is a softness to her expression that no one can get angry with. She does not have an opinion one way or the other. On the surface, she is simply calm, complacent, and non-threatening. She is an observer of life.
But if you look a little longer and a little deeper, you see something else. There is a wariness in her eyes, a sad acceptance. And I think that is the part that people notice and it makes them feel like more is going on in this painting. This is the thing that shifts the entire perspective of the viewer. Then people want to know if she is smiling or frowning because the more you look at her, the more you see. They say that art is really a depiction of the artist. So whether Davinci was depicting this woman’s situation or his own as a very neurodivergent person who challenged the status quo often, it is clear to me that someone is masking for their society in this painting.
Masks only work because people do not care to look deeper. For those that truly know me or even someone who just pays attention, it is obvious when my mask falls into place. It is a subconscious safety protocol to keep myself from being observed too closely. It keeps my personality within the bounds of what is allowed in the given instance and ensures I am not problematic to neurotypicals, generally in the workplace. But wearing a mask all the time is exhausting. Diluting yourself is harmful and overtime you will end up wearing an expression like the Mona Lisa. A sad acceptance that you will never truly fit into the world as you are. That is, unless we change it.
To drop your mask and live as your authentic self is scary and takes a lot of courage but it is not impossible. It takes a lot of little steps over time and developing a healthy support system is really the key to long term change. Coaching and therapy can help immensely, after all, you have to learn to accept yourself first. But a safe community that embraces you while holding you accountable is the game changer. I tried dropping my mask on my own. It would occasionally work but when it was met with resistance, I would withdraw and put the mask back on. It wasn’t until I carefully curated the group of people I allowed in my personal space that things became easier. I was able to let my personality shine through and was never told I was “extra” or “too much.” To people who understand you and who care to look deeper, you will never be “too much.”
I am no great art historian. I am simply a woman who looked at the Mona Lisa and felt something. This is what great art is supposed to do. It is supposed to make us feel things and think. We are a collection of our experiences and we will all look at this painting and find a different truth. This is my truth, what is yours?
