No. 13, The Smile

This image appropriates Leonardo da Vinci's painting, Mona Lisa (c. 1503-06), whose commission celebrates the birth of the sitter's second son, perhaps, explaining the new mother's enigmatic smile. By exchanging Mona Lisa's facial features and expression with Marko Djurica's portrait of the Green Man's unmasked face, the Italian Renaissance woman's sense of domesticity and economic privilege is supplanted by the rebel's savagery. This concept is also suggested by replacing portions of her early sixteenth century blouse with the Green Man's camouflage pattern on the arm sleeves. Along these lines, the appropriation of Djurica's portrait also elicits a reference to Marcel Duchamp's assisted ready-made, L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), whose subtext implies transgender identity suggested by rendering the Green Man as a cross-dresser.