Mona Lisa Smile -

“It’s exhausting,” Lisa replied. But the corner of her mouth curled, just slightly.

The gallery softened. Even Géricault’s dying men seemed to exhale. Mona Lisa Smile

The gallery fell silent. Even the Raft ’s waves stopped sloshing. “It’s exhausting,” Lisa replied

Lisa finally turned from the empty floor. Her face, in the low gallery light, was no longer the placid mask of legend. It was tired. “I am not a riddle,” she said. “I am a woman sitting in a chair. I am tired. I am warm. I am thinking about whether my eldest will marry well. That is all.” Even Géricault’s dying men seemed to exhale

A snort came from the far wall. Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa —a tangle of desperate, dying men—could not help itself. “Solve you? They don’t even look at us. They shuffle past my dead and my dying to squint at your eyebrow.”

In the Salle des États, behind her bulletproof glass and climate-controlled casing, the Mona Lisa —Lisa del Giocondo to her friends, though she had none here—allowed her famous mouth to curl into its accustomed riddle. Tonight, however, the smile felt heavier. Not a question. A weight.