Pregnant Mona Lisa?

Becoming Mona Lisa, Written by Donald Sassoon. Translated by Yoon Gil-soon. 496 pages. 18,000 won. Hae-naem publication.

The estimated age is 497. From the moment of implantation, it may be 500. She is certainly not young, but still enjoys popularity as a symbol of beauty.

It is sure that she had ups and downs. After making her home at the Louvre Museum, she was stolen in 1911 to Italy, her homeland, hit by a stone in her elbow in 1956, and traveled to the United States and Japan being treated as a national guest.

When adding the imagination of artists and writers, she led a life full of vicissitudes, appearing in other paintings and being suddenly in the family way. As she became more renowned, the most frequent question that the Louvre Museum received in 2000 was “Where is Mona Lisa?”

The book contains all about Mona Lisa, from the details of creation of her, to the acceptance by the public, and to the process that she transformed into works of art in other genre. It is possible to meet her in the novels of Oscar Wild and Somerset Maugham, and in the songs of Nat King Cole, Bob Dylan, and Elton John.

The Louvre Museum announced that it would give a single room to her from this year, commemorating the half-millennium of creation of her.

Yoon-Jong Yoo gustav@donga.com