Why is Mona Lisa holding a full-face helmet?

Jean-Baptiste Launay, more popularly known as Jisbar, a leading French pop-street artist, has created a reinterpretation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famed ‘Mona Lisa’ dedicating it to Italian motorcycle brand Ducati. The painting will be auctioned on Thursday, July 16, with the proceeds going to #RaceAgainstCOVID, a fundraising organised by Ducati for the S. Orsola Hospital in Bologna.

Dubbed ‘Ducati Mona Lisa’, the artwork is part of a series where Jisbar reinterprets Da Vinci's masterpiece in different ways. In ‘Ducati Mona Lisa’ the female figure is surrounded by visual and graphic elements that recall the history of Ducati, its models in the range and some of its most famous riders. And she is holding a full-face helmet!

The acrylic on canvas painting measures 141 x 106 cm, and will be put up for auction by Cambi Aste on the morning of Thursday 16 July, during auction #481 dedicated to modern and contemporary art, photography and comics, starting at 10.00 until the end of the last batch. The auction will be streamed online and offers can be placed directly from the page of the site which can be accessed via a link obtained during the registration phase.

Registrations are already open on www.cambiaste.com. The site is available in Italian, English, French and Chinese, while the auctioneer's live streaming will only be in Italian.