Mona Lisa

By: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519)

was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as
a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor,
and architect.[3] While his fame initially rested on his
achievements as a painter, he also became known for his
notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of
subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography,
painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have
been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal,[4]
and his collective works comprise a contribution to later
generations of artists matched only by that of his younger
contemporary, Michelangelo.
Born: April 15, 1452 at Vinci, Republic of Florence
Died: May 2, 1519 (aged 67) at Clos Lucé, Amboise, Kingdom of
France
Education: Studio of Andrea del Verrocchio
Known for: Painting, drawing, engineering, science, sculpture,
architecture,
Notable work : Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1483–1493)
Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489–1491)
The Vitruvian Man (c. 1490)
The Last Supper (c. 1495–1498)
Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1516)

LIFE OF AN ARTIST
Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in
the history of art and is often credited as the founder of the
High Renaissance.[3] Despite having many lost works and fewer
than 25 attributed major works—including numerous unfinished
works—he created some of the most influential paintings in
Western art.[3] His magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, is his best known
work and often regarded as the world’s most famous painting. The
Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time
and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural
icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to
Leonardo,[5] was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a
new record for tmost expensive painting ever sold at public
auction.
Da Vinci received no formal education beyond basic
reading, writing and math, but his father appreciated his
artistic talent and apprenticed him at around age 15 to the
noted sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio of
Florence. For about a decade, da Vinci refined his painting
and sculpting techniques and trained in mechanical arts.
When he was 20, in 1472, the painters’ guild of Florence
offered da Vinci membership, but he remained with Verrocchio
until he became an independent master in 1478. Around 1482,
he began to paint his first commissioned work, The Adoration
of the Magi, for Florence’s San Donato, a Scopeto monastery

LEONARDO DA VINCI: MONA LISA

It was painted sometime between 1503 and 1519, when
Leonardo was living in Florence, and it now hangs in the Louvre
Museum, Paris, where it remained an object of pilgrimage in the
21st century. The sitter’s mysterious smile and her unproven
identity have made the painting a source of ongoing investigation
and fascination.
The painting presents a woman in half-body portrait, which
has as a backdrop a distant landscape. Yet this simple
description of a seemingly standard composition gives little
sense of Leonardo’s achievement. The three-quarter view, in which
the sitter’s position mostly turns toward the viewer, broke from
the standard profile pose used in Italian art and quickly became
the convention for all portraits, one used well into the 21st
century.

Historical Context
The Mona Lisa is a likely a portrait of the wife of a
Florentine merchant. For some reason however, the portrait was
never delivered to its patron, and Leonardo kept it with him when
he went to work for Francis I, the King of France. The Mona
Lisa’s mysterious smile has inspired many writers, singers, and
painters.
He serves as a role model applying the scientific method to
every aspect of life, Including art and music. Although he is
best known for his dramatic and expressive artwork, Leonardo also
conducted dozens of carefully thought out experiments and created
futuristic inventions that were groundbreaking for the time.

Aesthetic Consideration
Created by one of the greatest Old Masters in the history of
art, the Mona Lisa is a wonderful example of High Renaissance
aesthetics of the early cinquecento, and has become an
unmistakable icon of Western culture: a fact recognized by Marcel
Duchamp (1887-1968), the father of modern art.

Color Significant
The Mona Lisa exemplifies Leonardo’s contribution to the art
of oil painting, namely his mastery of sfumato. This painterly
technique involves the smooth, almost imperceptible, transition
from one colour to another, by means of ultra-subtle tonal
gradations. Evident throughout the painting, Leonardo’s use of
sfumato is particularly visible in the soft contouring of Lisa
Gherardini’s face, around the eyes and mouth. It was a technique
of oil painting that he had already demonstrated with great
success in The Virgin of the Rocks (1483-5).
Leonardo was fascinated by the way light falls on curved
surfaces. The gauzy veil, Mona Lisa’s hair, the luminescence of
her skin – all are created with layers of transparent color, each
only a few molecules thick, making the lady’s face appear to
glow, and giving the painting an ethereal, almost magical
quality.

Spiritual Motifs and Ideas

 Leonardo constructed the Mona Lisa as an Image of God. The
Mona Lisa is his attempt to reach eternity. Through the Mona
Lisa, we are guided to follow this ancient path, called here the
Way of Truth, of which many spiritual teachers have already
taught us.
The sense of overall harmony achieved in the painting-
especially apparent in the sitter’s faint smile-reflects
Leonardo’s idea of the cosmic link connecting humanity and
nature, making this painting an enduring record of Leonardo’s
vision.

Philosophical Consideration
The Mona Lisa clearly represents the philosophy of the humanism
by representing the focus of the human being and realism. It also
shows nature as shown in the background behind the figure in the
painting. The main focus of the Mona Lisa falls actually on the
person in the picture.
In the Renaissance, there was a new view of humankind being
created: man was viewed as the center of the universe, man’s
dignity was glorified, and many believed in the potential of
human. The Mona Lisa reflects the ideas of humanism by making the
portrait of the person the focal point of the art piece.

Psychological Effect
Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting also has an optical
illusion named after it: the Mona Lisa effect. The feeling that
the subject of a painting follows you with her gaze. “You
continuously feel like you’re being looked at, despite moving to
the left, to the right, perhaps even rotating the picture.”
The portrait of Mona Lisa was chosen because it is the best-known
example of an expression at the ambiguity point between a happy
and a sad dimension. The reverse correlation experimental results
to be described had been replicated with a photograph depicting a
face with subtle expression.