Is This Painting "Better" than the Mona Lisa?

In the latest update, we present the latest issue of The Journal of Art Crime...plus a free essay, never published in English, on a painting I think is more interesting that the Mona Lisa

Happy summer to one and all! The Charney family will be traveling this summer (Velika Planina, northern Italy, Umbria, and Dalmatia) but that won’t stop me from sending an update here and there.

The Journal of Art Crime

Today’s update includes the latest issue of The Journal of Art Crime. This issue was guest-edited by Francesca Manzin, who did a great job bringing together new writers for a fascinating issue. Here is the Table of Contents.

If you’d like to subscribe (or encourage your institution to do so—then it’s free for you and benefits all), please email journal@artcrimeresearch.org.

Is Ivana Kobilca’s Kofetarica a Better Painting Than Mona Lisa?

For a special feature in Slovenia’s most prominent broadsheet, Delo, editor Karina Cunder encouraged me to write about my favorite Slovenian painting…and I argue that it is a more interesting masterpiece than Mona Lisa. This is only published in Slovenian (and you can also see me filmed in a series of videos, also in Slovene, about the story, including my interview with the owner of Kofetarica, Peter Hribar).

Here is the English-language version, as yet unpublished anywhere and just for you, dear subscribers!

Kofetarica vs. Mona Lisa: Which Is the More Interesting Painting?

Noah Charney

With a welcoming yet enigmatic expression, a grandmotherly woman dressed in black—signifying widowhood—raises a glazed terracotta coffee cup painted with flowers. Her motion suggests both a toast and the intent to sip, while her gaze meets ours directly. Her expression, layered with subtlety, is as elusive as the Mona Lisa’s, inviting interpretation. Is her look one of expectation? Evaluation? Is it simply about the coffee she has served us, or does the painting hold deeper social commentary? At the time of its creation, coffee was a luxury in this corner of the Habsburg Empire, and the term “coffee drinker” implied both wealth and idle leisure.

This is Kofetarica (1888), the iconic painting housed in the National Gallery of Slovenia, created by Ivana Kobilca. More than a straightforward portrait, the work suggests an underlying complexity—perhaps even a hidden edge to the unseen coffee itself or to the painter’s message. And, if you ask me, it’s more interesting than Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. I’ll explain why, as a professor of art history who teaches for the Smithsonian, the National Gallery UK and Yale University, I think this. But first, let’s get to know Kofetkarica, because even though I’m sure you recognize it, my guess is that you don’t know much about it. Nor did you know how world-class a painter Ivana Kobilca truly was.

Kobilca (1861–1926) was one of the foremost painters of the Academic Realist movement in the late 19th century. I featured her in my book, Brushed Aside: The Untold Story of Women in Art, where I rank her among the greatest artists, regardless of gender. Born in Ljubljana when it was part of the Austrian Empire, she came from a wealthy family of craftsmen, growing up fluent in French and Italian. Like many pre-modern female artists, she benefited from financial privilege (such is the back story with almost every professional female artist prior to the second half of the 20th century), which allowed her to pursue a career in art.

Working within Academic Realism—the dominant style taught in major European art academies—Kobilca excelled in a genre often dismissed for its traditionalism. While art history tends to celebrate the avant-garde, she and other Academic Realists mastered the prevailing style with undeniable skill. Despite shifts toward Impressionism in Slovenian art circles during the 1880s, she remained committed to her chosen approach. Her career took her beyond Ljubljana, with notable stints in Vienna, Paris, Sarajevo, Munich, and Berlin. She was honored by the Parisian Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and, upon her death in 1926, was hailed as “the greatest Yugoslav female painter.” One might argue the qualifier “female” was unnecessary—she may have been the greatest Yugoslav painter, period.

A visit to the National Gallery in Ljubljana highlights the Slovene Impressionists, yet Kobilca’s Kofetarica remains the museum’s defining masterpiece. Its quiet brilliance rivals that of the Mona Lisa—both paintings share an ability to sustain scrutiny and inspire discussion (more on that in a moment).

The genius of Kofetarica is its deceptively simple subject, layered with coded messages that would have been clear to an audience in 1888 but require decoding by contemporary viewers. The social implications of being labeled a “coffee drinker” at the time would have hinted at status, idleness, and indulgence. The woman in the painting may appear grandmotherly, but her knowing gaze, slight smile, and raised cup all suggest there is something unspoken—something more than just the drink at play.

Beyond its cultural symbolism, Kofetarica is a masterful study of color, light, and texture. The details of the painting—the sheen of the terracotta cup, the intricate folds of the woman’s black garments, the subtle play of shadow and light on her face—show Kobilca’s technical skill. Her ability to create an intimate yet universal portrait, a moment both everyday and profound, is what makes the work so enduring.

Freud once said, “Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.” Sometimes a cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee—but in this case it’s far more than that. It’s a loaded image, as Freud would describe a dream about a pipe as an image loaded with phallic symbolism. To be a “kofetarica” when this painting was made meant that you had too much time on your hands and not much sense, but also enough money to spend time drinking coffee and gossiping and not doing things that someone should be doing (which in the 1880s meant parenting, for a woman, and working, for a man). This kofetarica is an older woman so she has earned her idle time, but she acts as a sort of non-sexual temptress. She eyes us, the viewer of the painting, directly, inviting us to join her for a cup. Or perhaps we already have, and we might imagine that we are seated opposite her, perhaps in her home but more likely in a café, and we are kofetkari ourselves.

There may be something more, too. This was a time when magic and the paranormal were of keen popular interest throughout the Austrian empire—the age of seances. Reading one’s coffee grounds to predict the future was, like the reading of palms and Tarot cards, the realm of older women. The woman in this picture may not be sipping her own cup of coffee, but instead have taken up your empty cup, you the viewer of the painting, and has just read the grounds. She knows your future. She looks up at you with a sly smile. She certainly looks at you knowingly. Perhaps she has you figured out, to an extent that not even you comprehend? Perhaps she knows that she’s even more interesting than the Mona Lisa?

Leonardo da Vinci made few paintings during his life. He was busy with other things: he earned most of his money as a military engineer or a musician (he was one of Europe’s premiere performers, playing the lira di braccio, a stringed instrument like a cross between a viola and a guitar). He was much more interested in science and the human body than in art. He made a handful of portraits (the exact number is uncertain, with art historians arguing over it), but it was certainly more of a hobby for him than a career. The Mona Lisa was a very early portrait, commissioned of young Leonardo by a friend of his father’s as a favor—giving the kid a bit of work, since he clearly had talent. The friend was a businessman called Francesco del Giocondo, and the gig was to portray his young wife, Lisa Gherardini. Leonardo never finished the painting—he rarely finished anything, often called away on other work, and with a short but intensive attention span. He likely was never paid for the painting and he considered it unfinished throughout his life. He kept it with him, carrying it to France, where he spent the end of his life under the patronage of the French king, Francois I. Recent forensic analyses suggest that he reworked the painting several times, so that the version we see now looks very unlike Lisa Gherardini. When Leonardo died, his estate passed to his favorite assistant, Salai, and it was ultimately purchased along with other paintings by Francois I, thus entering the French royal collection. The king loved it and kept it in his “toilette,’ which sounds a bit like it was hanging over his toilet—an image I love—but it actually means that it was in his private rooms.

Mona Lisa became the world’s most famous painting thanks to two things, neither of which are related to what the painting looks like. The first is the celebrity of Leonardo who, along with Raphael and Michelangelo (three-quarters of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) were the most admired painters among the Old Masters. This was largely down to how much they were praised by the godfather of art history, Giorgio Vasari, in his 1550 book, The Lives of the Artists. (I wrote a whole book about that book, and mine is called Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art). What Vasari liked hugely influenced popular opinion, particularly in the anglophone world when a widespread edition was published in 1850. This led to Leonardo being most praised. Then came the theft of the Mona Lisa (the subject of yet another book of mine) in 1911, which made international headlines and held the focus of the world news for nearly two years, until it was returned.

There have been a world of crazy conspiracy theories around Mona Lisa: that it is actually a self-portrait of Leonardo in drag, that there is a hidden code within it, that there’s a picture of a crocodile hidden in an eye, that Egyptian hieroglyphics can be found inside. All of them are ridiculous and false. It is the world’s most recognizable artwork because of Vasari spreading the cult of Leonardo and because it was stolen. Otherwise it is a very beautiful High Renaissance portrait but nothing more. It’s not even Leonardo’s best work, if you ask me (that would be Lady with an Ermine). It’s famous, and it certainly has had an interesting history as an object changing hands and influencing world culture through the centuries (after all, I wrote a whole book about just this one painting). But if you look at its content, what it is actually a painting of—there isn’t much to talk about. There’s no mystery as to who it shows. There’s no symbolism in it, so nothing really to interpret. It’s beautiful and as skillfully executed as any painting in history, sure. But its content isn’t particularly interesting.

I think this is why there have been so many kooky conspiracy theories and whacky ideas thrown at it. At a subconscious level people think there must be more to the painting than meets the eye. But there isn’t. Its beauty, and the twists and turns of the painting as an object through history, its influence thanks to its fame, are all interesting enough. We don’t need any cross-dressing hidden crocodiles with hieroglyphics.

Which brings us back to the initial question posed in this essay. Is Kofetarica a more interesting painting? If we consider only the content, what it’s a painting of, then it certainly is. There is much more to talk about, to chew on, to consider, to debate in it than there is in the content of Mona Lisa.

Kofetarica challenges us to reconsider the mundane. What seems like a simple gesture—a woman drinking coffee—becomes something much more. She is both an individual and a type, a symbol of leisure, an emblem of status, and a character in a silent story we can only partially decipher. The ambiguity of her expression, so carefully captured, invites endless speculation.

Kofetarica remains one of the great portraits of art history. It captures something beyond its immediate subject—a richness that extends beyond the painted surface, into the histories, customs, and human expressions it encapsulates. Like the Mona Lisa, it compels us to look closer, think deeper, and wonder what else might be hidden beneath that knowing gaze. But Kofetarica rewards us with more meat on the bone than Mona Lisa offers.

The impact of Kobilca’s work goes beyond Kofetarica itself. She was a pioneering woman in a field that remained overwhelmingly male-dominated. Unlike many female artists of her time, who often painted within the “acceptable” realms of portraiture and domestic scenes, Kobilca asserted herself within the grand tradition of European Academic Realism. She was not a minor player in Slovenian art history—she was the central figure of her generation. And her Kofetarica remains, to this day, a work that invites and rewards closer study.

I’d rather have Kofetarica in my living room. But if you’re offering me the Mona Lisa, I’ll take that, all the same.

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And finally, tomorrow (Sunday the 13th) I’ll be interviewed in a several page spread in NeDelo, the Sunday edition of Delo newspaper in Slovenia. Here’s the preview show.

Best wishes to all and happy summer!