mona lisa smile

so today in my art history class, we were talking about velázquez and his self-portrait. he painted himself in one of his paintings, La Rendición de Breda, and our teacher told us about how they had another painting by him and they thought it was just of a random man, but once they actually cleaned it well, they compared it to the Breda painting and it was actually a self-portrait, therefore making the painting increase substantially in value. I thought this was so cool because for years people walked by it, thinking it was nothing, until one day they cleaned it and it was so much more.

This is exactly like the Mona Lisa painting in the Prado here! You can read the story here but basically they had a regular painting up in the Prado for years, until they actually cleaned it recently and realized that it was a painting of the Mona Lisa, but done at the same time as Leonardo da Vinci. It shows that one of da Vinci's pupils must have painted it but someone in the 18th century painted the background black because that's what was in style at the time. No one knew what was underneath until now! It was really cool to see it at the Prado (twice!) and I was really excited to show my family when they came, but they just moved it this past week to the Louvre in Paris to compare them side by side (where the real Mona Lisa is). So now I'm really upset because I can't show them! But just wanted to share a little art history with you!