Clip & save art notes - discussion of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa

Arts & Activities, Jan, 2003 by Guy Hubbard

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Mona Lisa, 1501-05, oil on canvas-covered panel; 30" x 20". The Louvre, Paris, France.

ABOUT THIS PAINTING

The Mona Lisa has been--and still is--one of the most recognizable works of art in the world. Most people will identify it immediately after they see a reproduction of it or if other artists have used it in their work. Part of this mystery is the expression on the face, and part is linked to the great genius associated with Leonardo, himself.

Over 60 early copies of the painting have been identified, some by Masters such as Raphael who admired it and wanted to learn from it. However, ever since great art collections were opened to the public, so many people have copied the painting that the number of them is unknown. Art museums have always encouraged artists to copy great Master paintings, partly for them to sell and partly to encourage their education as artists. The pose, itself, has been used by very many artists, while versions of the picture have appeared in various forms in modern works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Leger.

Leonardo da Vinci spent four years working on this picture. While it may look finished to most people, the artist claimed that it was never complete, and he never delivered it to the family that commissioned it. In trying to achieve this ideal inner vision, Leonardo became so attached to the painting that he wouldn't part with it. So, instead of delivering it to its owners, he kept it almost until the time he died, continually claiming that it was not finished. Only late in Leonardo's life--and long after the death of Mona Lisa--did he sell it to the king of France who then sent the money to the family in Florence. Another name for the painting is La Gioconda, the name of the family.

Leonardo was very impressed with the face of Mona Lisa and used it to try and portray his inner vision of perfect beauty. He didn't just try to reproduce what he saw, but tried to make it convey his deepest feelings and understandings of his idea of perfection. To explain his feelings, he once wrote, "Painting is poetry that sees instead of feeling; and poetry is painting that feels instead of seeing."

Interestingly, similar kinds of magical smiles can be found in Oriental art as well as in ancient Greek sculpture, none of which Leonardo was likely to have seen.

While the portrait is an artistic masterpiece, it is also an example of careful scientific study. Leonardo analyzed the anatomy of the face thoroughly, especially the muscles around the mouth that resulted in the mysterious smile for which the painting is famous. He then painted the portrait with softly shaded areas of light and dark, because he preferred in his pictures a kind of lighting called "chiaroscuro" that resembles twilight. As a result, some parts of his pictures are bathed in soft light while others fade into gentle dusk. In this painting, the focus is on the flesh tints of the portrait, while the background is closer to a dream. A misty landscape of rocky gorges dissolves into a bluish-green distance.

During the time Leonardo was painting this portrait, he brought entertainers to his studio to play music to try and make his sitter happy with jokes and acrobatic dancing. And yet, from studying the figure, this might have been difficult to do, because we know that shortly before, her only daughter had died. Consequently, she was very sad and wore a black veil in the picture in mourning for her dead child. And, even though she was rich, she was not wearing any jewelry--another sign that she was in mourning.

The pose of the Mona Lisa has been repeated so many times since Leonardo used it that we are unaware how innovative it was at the time the picture was painted at the beginning of the 16th century. The lady is sitting on a chair--although it cannot be seen--with her body slightly rotated. Her head is slightly turned with her eyes slightly turned again as though making eye contact with a visitor. Her crossed hands are an indication of being relaxed and also indicate that she was an educated person. She is smiling rather than laughing, which at the time was considered superior to laughing. The choice of hand positions in portraits was particularly important at the time: clenched hands meant anger; a palm over the heart meant grief; and a hand under the chin meant sadness.

The surroundings to the figure are also important. The original painting, before it was cut down to its present size about 100 years after Leonardo's death, included the columns of a balcony, called a "loggia," overlooking a distant landscape. We know that the painting was cut down because some of the early copies included the columns present in the original.

Landscape painting was not thought of highly during the Italian Renaissance, so its inclusion in this painting is part of the mystery that surrounds the picture. Through his efforts, however, Leonardo laid the groundwork for landscape art as an independent branch of painting. Earlier, when landscapes had been included in Italian pictures they had usually consisted of bare rocks to indicate hostile places beyond the heavenly garden. These artists frequently made up their landscapes or arranged groups of roughly shaped stones and painted them. Leonardo, in keeping with his deep curiosity, took his sketchbook and went into the mountains to draw actual rocks and rugged landscapes, some of which can be seen in his sketchbooks.