Victoria Heatherbell holds an image of her painting of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in the style of a Leonardo Da Vinci portrait at her Dunedin home yesterday. PHOTO: LINDA ROBERTSONWhen Dunedin painter Victoria Heatherbell entered a competition asking artists to put twists on famous works, a particular muse came to mind. ``Everybody talks about the Mona Lisa's smile and I thought, well, we've got our own smiling Mona Lisa in our prime minister,'' she said. Ms Heatherbell's painting, based on the body of da Vinci's La Gioconda (often called Mona Lisa) with Ms Ardern's face, won the Mangaweka Fakes and Forgeries competition at the weekend. The Mona Lisa part of the painting was fairly easy as it was straight copying, but she wanted to get Ms Ardern's features just right, she said.

Source: Otago Daily Times November 06, 2017 16:07 UTC