ABSTRACT
That a painting can be infused with the qualities of music is a notion that flowered in the nineteenth century, though it appears well before that. In embryonic form, it underlies Leonardo da Vinci‧s engagement of musicians, as reported by Giorgio Vasari, to play during the painting of Mona Lisa: this was to ensure that the vivacity of the sitter would shine forth in the finished portrait. And indeed afterward, “it was considered a wondrous thing that [her smile] was as lively as the smile of the living original.” 1 Four hundred and fifty years after Vasari‧s Lives, Maurice Denis returned to Mona Lisa as a benchmark of musicality—likening the “blue arabesques” in the background of Leonardo‧s painting to “the seduction of the violins in the overture to Tannhäuser.” 2
