Some months ago I searched online for newly published children’s books about Leonardo da Vinci and was excited to find a reference to Nicholas Day’s The Mona Lisa Vanishes.
Day, the author of Baby Meets World, wrote his narrative nonfiction as an account of the attempt to steal the Mona Lisa in 1911, but he also dives further back in time to examine the Italian Renaissance and the man who painted the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci.
Two copies of the book are listed in Richmond Public Library’s catalogue.
When I went there to borrow it, one copy was checked out and the other copy couldn’t be found. It was a new acquisition, but it had – ironically, given its title – vanished.
Then I checked the catalogue of the Vancouver Public Library and saw that a copy was available at the branch I regularly go to. I immediately drove there.
The book could not be found even though it had arrived at the library only the day before. Like the copy at the Richmond library, it seemed to have vanished.
The librarians were baffled. They went over all the shelves in the children’s section, book by book. They looked at a picture of the cover online. After half an hour of fruitless searching, one librarian had the bright idea to go to the display of new adult non-fiction books. And there it was!
Actually, none of us were surprised. Whoever had put the children’s book in that adult non-fiction display case had not looked at the call number but only at the book’s cover.
No one would assume it was for a children’s book - it was perfect for an adult thriller. But I was determined not to judge the book by its cover.
However, my enthusiasm fizzled out as I read the first three pages.
They were full of missed opportunities. Day could have written something intelligent, accurate and sensitive. He didn’t have to be snappy and sensational in order to write entertainingly about Leonardo and the Renaissance.
His information (and misinformation) clearly came through the filter of a few popular histories, which are listed at the end as “Sources.”
On the first page he misleadingly describes a Renaissance notary as an early version of a lawyer. He states that Leonardo should have become a notary, like his father and grandfather before him.
Day thinks that being “a notary may have been the most boring profession in Renaissance Italy, but it was steady.” That’s a silly assessment.
The office of notary was anything but boring. In Florence, it was a stepping stone to the powerful position of chancellor. In any case, Leonardo was disqualified from the profession of notary because he was an illegitimate child.
Day characterizes Leonardo as “an extraordinary, ingenious, wondrously weird man.”
There’s no doubt he was extraordinary and ingenious. But wondrously weird?
That, I suspect, is supposed to make the story of Leonardo appeal to children. And yet Leonardo actually does demonstrate enough ingenuity, curiosity and bravado in his experiments and projects to keep a reader of any age enthralled.
Furthermore, Leonardo never let failure stop him. This can’t be stressed enough. Failure for Leonardo was an incentive rather than a deterrent.
Failure made him continue to question and search, the two driving forces in his life that, combined with the ability to give form to what he saw and thought, made him a genius.
In fact, the only passage about Leonardo that shows insight comes at the very end of the book.
Day wonders if Leonardo would have gone to the Louvre to see his own painting of the Mona Lisa. He concludes, “Maybe. Or maybe he’d turn his back on it and observe the crowds instead. Maybe he’d see something new there.”
Studying the people who are studying his painting is precisely what it’s possible to imagine Leonardo doing. He was an observer, and it was from what he observed around him that he drew inspiration.
Day’s story of the theft deserves the New York Times’ description of it as a“witty thriller.” The Mona Lisa Vanishes may be an entertaining art heist thriller, but Day’s handling of Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian Renaissance is frustrating and disappointing.
Sabine Eiche is a local writer and art historian with a PhD from Princeton University. Her passions are writing for children and protecting nature. Her columns deal with a broad range of topics and often include etymology in order to shed extra light on the subject.
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