The Mona Lisa

Isn’t it messed up that Leonardo Da Vinci never knew he painted the Mona Lisa?

Like he knew he painted a portrait of Mona Lisa, but he didn’t know he painted The Mona Lisa. It’s funny because it used to motivate me to think that every step of his career led up to that painting. That the first stick figure he made was the first draft of all those things he would later create. It helps me to create casually. Even if your creation sucks, it’s practice for the next one. (That is practice for the next one.) And so on.

But then, you never quite reach it. In my head there will come a day when it’s no longer practice for the next one, because I’ve actually reached that point. I’ve made it. But the truth is, we never arrive there, we never know our Mona Lisa. Because it’s not like Da Vinci just painted it and then hung it in the Louvre. He probably just started preparing the next canvas. As far as he knew it might have been just another painting in a long line of paintings, and he never reached “it”, or got “there”, wherever there is.