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As to that, it remained for Art Critic-Author André Malraux to venture his own explanation of La Gioconda's famous smile. Said he: "The antiquity which Italy revived proposed an idealization of forms. But the world of classical statues, being a world without sight, was also a world without a soul. Sight, soul, spirituality—that was Christian art and Leonardo had found this illustrious smile for the face of the Virgin. Using it to transfigure a profane countenance, Leonardo gave to woman's soul that idealization which Greece had given to her features. The mortal being with the divine gaze triumphs over the sightless goddesses. It is the first expression of what Goethe was to call 'the Eternal Feminine.' "
*It will be on display in Washington until Feb. 3, and at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art from Feb. 7 to March 4. * Actually the British, not the Americans, took Arromanches.