Aspect Art | art history, info & news

Analysis of the Mona Lisa Painting
Leonardo Da Vinci was born and raised in Italy where the Mona Lisa was ultimately painted started in 1503. The style of the painting has long been cited as the forerunner of numerous styles of art, one of the true masterpieces in the history of world art.

Leonardo Da Vinci : The Mona Lisa - c.1503 - 1506

(Buy a hand painted reproduction of The Mona Lisa from us)

A Description of Mona Lisa
Painting the Mona Lisa, Leonardo elevated himself into another station of artist, those that create new forms and perspectives. The relatively small painting of Mona Lisa manages to craft one of the most intense and effective art experience into a compact 30” by 20 ½” frame. As for what kind of paint Mona Lisa was originally envisioned with, oils were used on poplar wood panel and have been restored numerous times. In recent years, curators at the Louvre have begun to worry that the painting appears to be breaking down more rapidly than in the past.

Leonardo places his model in the midst of the painting, using a pyramid design to center her. The fold of her hands forms the front of the pyramid and he uses the same glowing light for her breast, neck and face. His lighting is important as he uses it to create many of the geometric shapes – circles and spheres – that compose the painting. The form of the painting itself is very simple, a modification of the Seated Madonna, a form very popular during the 15th and 16th centuries for portraits.

Raphael Sanzio : The Madonna of the Chair - 1514 - 1515

(Buy a hand painted reproduction of Raphael’s The Madonna of the Chair from us)

What Does the Mona Lisa Mean?
He modifies the formula however, creating a sense of distance between the sitter and observer, mostly utilizing the arm chair on which she rests. Everything about her posture speaks reservation and silence. However, her eyes silently meet the gaze of the observer, drawing the viewer into her eye line. Everything surrounding her face is dark, bringing that much more focus to the light of her face and the attraction it provides. The overall effect is a kind of natural attraction to her, drawn in by her appearance, but it immediately contrasts with the distance Leonardo creates between subject and observer.

The landscape of the painting has long been pointed out as the first instance of portrait on landscape. Seated in the midst of an open loggia with what appears to be pillars on either side of her, a vast landscape stretches out towards an icy mountain range. The curves of her hair and clothing are emulated in the waves of the landscape and steady curves in the river and hills behind her. The question has thus arisen as to whether the Mona Lisa is as much a portrait as it is the depiction of an ideal. The harmony between the model and the landscape behind her creates a sort of natural order, all punctuated by the detail of her mouth and that world famous smile.

The Smile
For centuries, historians, psychologists, writers, and politicians have been trying to offer their own theories as to what the smile of Mona Lisa might signify. Freud characterized it as an allusion to an Oedipus complex (he was in love with his mother) in Da Vinci while others have stated that it is a sign of innocence and calm. The question of why the smile is seen in so many different ways has become almost as big of a research subject as the smile itself. There have been scientists who point out the special relations of the smile and how human sight picks up on them. Margaret Livingstone, a professor at Harvard claims that the painting is most effective when viewed peripherally. The smile is more effective when looking at her eyes for example.

Leonardo Da Vinci : The Mona Lisa (detail of smile) - c.1503 - 1506

In 2005 a computer program was used that analyzes facial expressions for emotional recognition to assign “emotional” values to the smile. That program found her to be 83% happy. Regardless of Da Vinci’s intentions, the smile of the Mona Lisa is one of the most enduring questions in all of art.

Mona Lisa Analysis Today
Because of the research and attention the Mona Lisa has drawn, more than a few dozen people have tried their hand at recreating it. Hundreds of copies reside in different art galleries around the world, some of which their owners believe to be the original. Recently, an internet phenomenon has arise in which a clever MS Paint user was able to make a video showing how to make the Mona Lisa on paint, the free graphics program bundled with Windows. Copying the Mona Lisa has long been a standard test of an artist’s tenacity and skill.

View all of Da Vinci’s Paintings On-Line

In the halls of the Louvre in France, a painting of Mona Lisa, Leonardo Da Vinci’s mysteriously enigmatic masterpiece, sits as a centerpiece of Renaissance Artwork. The source of her enigmatic smile, the setting of her stationed pose and the question of what Da Vinci might have originally intended have all been long standing questions regarding the portrait.

Leonardo Da Vinci : The Mona Lisa - c.1503 - 1506

(Buy a hand painted reproduction of The Mona Lisa from us)

Since the Mona Lisa portrait was painted by Da Vinci in 1509, her image has fascinated everyone from Kings to Emperors, to even a museum employee turned art thief. Pictures of Mona Lisa have been turned into pop culture art by Warhol, Botero, magazine covers, and the symbol for all things classical and artistic. Copies and alternate versions are abundant, but only one true Mona Lisa painting sits in the halls of the Louvre.

Other Versions of the Mona Lisa Portrait

Understanding the painting has been the lifelong occupation of more than a handful of art scholars and painters. For that reason, many have come forward with what they claim to be an alternate, or the actual version of the Mona Lisa Portrait. In the early 1900s what appeared to be a copy of the Mona Lisa painting was found in the home of a nobleman in Europe. The second copy is clearly unfinished and has long been a source of some argument, with classical references to La Gioconda as a second version of the painting. As to who painted the Isleworth Mona Lisa portrait, no one can quite agree, though it is generally agreed that it was not Da Vinci.

 

Artist Unknown : Isleworth “Mona Lisa”

Another version of the Mona Lisa was painted in 1616 or so and was gifted to Joshua Reynolds in 1790. He thought it to be the original painting for some years. It has recently been revealed to be a copy though. It is however a copy of the original painting, when the Mona Lisa was still vibrant with color and only 100 years old, giving a much better idea of what the painting looked like when first painted.

 

Artist Unknown : Mona Lisa Copy held in the Walters Gallery - c.1616

There are even more copies of the Mona Lisa in the nude. These alternate paintings have been disputed by historians as to their authenticity even as copies. The possibility that Da Vinci might have painted an original nude as well as the Mona Lisa we know today is still entertained today though.

 

Possibly by Gian Giacomo Caprotti (Salai) : Mona Vanna

Looking at a Picture of the Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa pictures as well as the painting have long been studied for clues as to her pose, her identity, and the meaning of Da Vinci’s placement of the model. In recent years, X-Ray scans have revealed three different version of the painting in the same frame as it was revised over time, both in revision by the artist and in restorations by museum curators and artists after Da Vinci’s time.

 

X-Ray of the Mona Lisa

The painting itself though has long enthralled those that lay eyes on it. Da Vinci essentially introduced atmospheric perspective to landscape backgrounds and started the use of single-vanishing point perspective. The background itself is painted to appear timeless, something above and beyond the landscapes of Italy during his life. He manages to create a background with as dispassionate a temperament as the model in the foreground. Others have commented that Da Vinci had an affinity for combining his interests and his pastimes, infusing the landscape of his painting with well situated topography and weather activities, only a couple among thousands of his lifelong pursuits.

It is that distanced interest and utilization of such an ethereal, sfumato infused style in the background that so well compliments the image of Mona Lisa herself. Without any jewelry, showing her famously enigmatic smile and appearing as mysterious as any portrait subject in art history, Mona Lisa and the contents of the painting in which she is situated are equally confounding.

 

Colour Image showing the thickness of the paint demonstrating Da Vinci’s Sfumato technique he used on the Mona Lisa’s Smile. The thickest parts are shown red, and the thinnest parts blue

As for defining the picture of the Mona Lisa herself, entire libraries could be filled with the theories and conjectures that simple smile alone has created. In recent years, historians have gone as far as to utilize a computer program to analyze the smile to ascertain if it is “happy” or “ironic” or any number of different emotional responses.

View all of Da Vinci’s Paintings On-Line