The Mona Lisa : The masterpiece of da Vinci
The sketch of a Florentine fashion dressed woman, sitting among the fanciful landscapes with mountains depicts the sfumato sketching technique of Leonardo(an Italian artist), which uses soft -heavily shaded modeling.
This woman is one who is more famous and renowned than any celebrity in the world, we are talking about Mona Lisa.
The wife of Francesco del Giocondo, La Gioconda, is the woman widely known as Mona Lisa. The painting in discussion is a 30 x 20 ⅞ inches oil painting on wood. It is exhibited in the Louvre in Paris, France, and possessed by the Government of France. The bewitching and distant expression portrayed by Mona Lisa has gained its Universal recognition. The way ermine portrays Cecilia Gallerani in Krakow and the juniper branchlets portray Ginevra Benci in Washington is similar to how the mysterious smile of Mona Lisa portrays the sitter. This smile illustrates the concept of joy and delight which is implied by the Italian word “Gioconda”.
The conception of using this enigmatic smile as the central motif for this portrait ended up categorizing it as an ideal work of art. The details shown in the landscape play an important role in the illustration of this painting. The bridge and the winding road characterize the shift that happens from the surroundings of the sitter off to the area far away. The land in the distance seems doubtful for humans to be living in, while on the other hand the area around the sitter’s chest is painted with warm tones to represent human inhabitants.
Fun facts about Mona Lisa
The concept of aerial perspective was first used by Leonardo da Vinci.
The Leonardo Da Vinci Mona Lisa painting was the first portrait to depict a sitting with a fantasized landscape.
Da Vinci began working on Mona Lisa in native Italy but finished it once he moved to France at the request of King Francois I.
Mona Lisa remained in Fontainebleau palace for about a century.
The Leonardo Da Vinci Mona Lisa painting was removed from the Grand Palace of Versailles by Louis XIV.
It was held in Napoleon Bonaparte’s boudoir in the 191st century.
The Mona Lisa painting is thought to be a self portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci.
In the Louvre Museum, Paris, Mona Lisa has an entire room for herself.
This room has a shatter-proof glass display accompanied by a glass ceiling. The natural lighting from the ceiling and controlled temperature of 43 degrees F adds an ambiance to the room.
This masterpiece was painted not on a canvas but a poplar plank.
During an investigation regarding the theft of the Mona Lisa, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested and Pablo Picasso was a suspect.
Mona Lisa has been allotted a personal mailbox.
A large number of flowers and love letters have arrived from admirers of the Mona Lisa since it was first hung at the Louvre in 1815.
As per the French heritage law, Mona Lisa could neither be sold nor bought by anyone.
Interesting facts about Mona Lisa
The real name of the woman in the painting is not Mona Lisa.
In Italian, the name ‘Mona Lisa/Monna Lisa’ boils down to ‘My Lady Lisa’.
She is among the many unfinished words of Da Vinci which were left to his assistant after he passed away in 1519.
At the request of Jackie Kennedy, Mona Lisa was showcased in the Metropolitan Museum of the Arts in New York City and the Nation Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., with the permission of French President de Gaulle.
A theft in summer 1911 made the Mona Lisa a worldwide celebrity.
The painting came back to the Louvre after two years.
During her lifetime, Mona Lisa underwent many attacks from vandals.
In 1956, one vandal threw a rock at her and in another attack, a vandal threw acid on this masterpiece.
After being placed in bulletproof glass, it was saved from a coffee cup attack in 2009 and spray paint in 1974.
The dimensions of this influential cultural masterpiece are small compared to its fame and status.
It is 30 inches x 21 inches in dimensions and 18 pounds in weight.
According to Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Margaret Livingstone, Mona Lisa’s smile has a tendency to change people’s mindset on the basis of how one focuses on her and the brain responses.
Books about the Mona Lisa
‘I, Mona Lisa’ written by Jeanne Kalogridis is a historical novel about Lisa Gherardini. She was the muse for Leonardo da Vinci's painting Mona Lisa. The story weaves a web of loss, betrayal, and love. It gradually tries to unwind the enigmas of Da Vinci's masterpiece.
The Smile(2008) written by Donna Jo Napoli is a YA novel containing daily events of Monna Elisabetta, commonly known as Mona Lisa. It is set during Renaissance Florence and the ends go up to the point she poses as a muse for Da Vinci.
The Second Mrs. Gaiconda/The Second Mrs. Goiconda was written by E.L. Konigsburg. It is a historical fiction set in Milan, Italy, narrated in the third person. The novel dives into the locale of the muse.
The Private Life of Mona Lisa(1975) by Pierre La Mure describes the happenings of Lisa Gherardini and Leonardo’s life that assembles within the portrait.
The Da Vinci Code(2003) written by Dan Brown is a mystery thriller. Mona Lisa plays a crucial role in the underlying plot.
Poems about Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa has been an inspiration and fascination for many writers and artists. Some of the poems describing her are:
Mona Lisa’s Smile by Marilyn Lott: The title of the poem is self-describing.
Mona Lisa by Mary Gardiner Horsford: It describes how Leonardo ended up spending four years trying to find ways to portray the fair Florentine.
La Gioconda by Michael Field: This aphoristic poem is among the most famous pieces about Mona Lisa. It was written by Edith Cooper (1862-1913) and Katharine Bradley(1846-1914) under the pen name of Michael Field. The poem skillfully ablaze the same enigma as the portrait itself. The use of exotic words such as “luster” adds to the beauty, mystery, and darkness of the subject. There is sadistic and masochistic cruelty depicted from the manner in which the woman rests her hand. This posture implies “patience”.
Leonardo da Vinci's words about Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci was not only a Renaissance artist but also a polymath. He painted numerous iconic masterpieces during his lifetime. Mona Lisa was among these masterpieces. It took Vinci a myriad of years to paint the Mona Lisa and yet it remains unfinished. The work on Mona Lisa began in the 1500s.
The painting is from an aerial perspective. She was the first portrait to be painted using this technique. The backdrop of the painting is a far distant landscape with the mysterious woman with a similarly mysterious smile portrayed in the center. There are shadowed pillars on both sides of the woman and she seems to be resting in an open loggia. The transition from the winding and the bridge leads to the inhabitable icy mountains. With the help of sfumato, da Vinci creates vibrations that travel across the imaginary streams and valleys by the use of luscious strokes in the subject’s clothing and her hair.
Da Vinci plays gracefully with the light and shadows to create an atmosphere of solitude. It is these characteristics that made Mona Lisa to be recognized as a dateless portrait representing an ideal woman. Her famous subtle smile is like an invisible bridge between mother nature and humanity. The Mona Lisa is an alive poetic riddle with a soul that roams the surroundings but yet is unapproachable.
The painting, which is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel, is most likely of the Italian noblewoman Lisa Gherardini, Francesco del Giocondo's wife. Leonardo Da Vinci never delivered the artwork to the Giocondo family, and it is thought that he left it to his favorite apprentice Sala in his will. It was previously thought to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo Da Vinci may have worked on it until 1517. Since 1797, it has been on permanent exhibit at the Louvre in Paris, where it was purchased by King Francis I of France and is currently the property of the French Republic. The Mona Lisa is a famous work(famous artwork) of an Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci's half-length portrait painting.
It has been called "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world" It has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of Italian art in the entire world." The picture was moved to a new place within the Louvre museum(an Italian museum), at Salle des États on April 6, 2005, after a period of curatorial upkeep, recording, and analysis. It is housed behind bulletproof glass in a custom-built, climate-controlled box. An LED bulb has been used to illuminate this most famous painting since 2005, and in 2013, a new 20 watt LED lamp was installed specifically for this piece. The lamp has a careful Rendering color Index of up to 98 and reduces infrared and ultraviolet light, both of which can harm the painting.
In 2014, a France 24 article speculated that the painting could be sold to help pay off the country's debt, despite the fact that the Mona Lisa and other works of art are prohibited from being sold under French cultural heritage law, which states that "collections held in museums that belong to public bodies are considered public property and cannot be otherwise." Lisa del Giocondo was the wife of wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo and a member of the Gherardini dynasty of Florence and Tuscany. The picture is supposed to have been commissioned for their new house, as well as to commemorate the birth of their second son.
The Italian name of the painting, La Gioconda, means 'jocund' or, literally, 'the jocund one,' and is a play on Lisa's marital name, Giocondo. The term La Joconde has the same meaning in French and hence the title was used. Lisa's hands were in detail, with her right hand resting on her left. To show Lisa as a virtuous and enigmatic woman and loving wife, Leonardo selected this gesture over a wedding ring. The Mona Lisa is strikingly similar to numerous Renaissance portrayals of the Virgin Mary, who was viewed as a model for womanhood at the period. Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the first painters to use aerial perspective, and the work was one of the first portraits to represent the sitter in front of an artificial landscape. The mysterious woman looks to be seated in an open loggia with black pillar bases on either side. A huge countryside recedes behind her, giving way to cold mountains.
The only traces of human existence are winding trails and a distant bridge. Leonardo has opted to set the horizon line on a level with the eyes, rather than at the neck, as he did with Ginevra de' Benci, thus integrating the figure with the environment and accentuating the mysterious aspect of the painting. Vasari's description of the Mona Lisa is based on his biography of Leonardo da Vinci, which was published 31 years after the artist's death in 1550.
It has long been the most well-known source of information on the work's provenance and sitter's identity. Sala, Leonardo's helper, held a picture named la Gioconda, a painting handed to him by Leonardo, at the time of his death in 1524. The picture was brought to the Louvre after the French Revolution, but it spent a brief time in Napoleon's Tuileries Palace bedroom. Outside of the art world, the Mona Lisa was hardly known, but in the 1860s, a segment of the French intellectuals began to praise it as a Renaissance masterpiece. The agreement among art historians in the twenty-first century is that the painting shows Lisa del Giocondo, as has long been assumed.
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