Mona Lisa or La Gioconda
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda painting by Leonardo da Vinci
The Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, is a Renaissance work painted on oil on panel between the years 1503 and 1506 by the multifaceted artist Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci, Italy, 1452-Amboise, France, 1519). The painting is currently in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.
The
Mona Lisa is considered the most famous painting in the world. Few works
have gone through both scrutiny and study. Some of the reasons that
make it so famous are:
The extreme realism of Leonardo da Vinci when using mathematical methods to measure human proportions,
The unique technique of sfumato that also conveys a very advanced realism for the time,
The revolution that it generated in the dimensions and in the ways of portraying, considered the basis of all Western portraits,
The extreme realism of Leonardo da Vinci when using mathematical methods to measure human proportions,
The unique technique of sfumato that also conveys a very advanced realism for the time,
The revolution that it generated in the dimensions and in the ways of portraying, considered the basis of all Western portraits,
The sum of the mysteries of the painting; from the identity of the model to why Leonardo da Vinci never delivered the order.
Mona Lisa analysis
Description and characteristics
From the point of view of the composition, the Mona Lisa is a portrait of half body, or three quarters, on a landscape that is divided into two atmospheres, one colder (the upper one) and another warmer with earthy colors (the lower).
The position of the woman derives from the "pyramid" used to represent the sitting madonnas, that is, it is a triangular geometrization.
His crossed hands form the base of the pyramidal form. The light applied to the chest and neck is the same applied to the hands.
The center of the frame is the woman's chest and is aligned with the left eye and the fingers of the right hand. This accentuates the presence of the character in the composition.
His left arm is comfortably resting on the arm of the chair and is crossed by the right arm. The position of the arms together with that of the armchair transmit a distance between her and the viewer.
The head is covered by a veil that symbolizes chastity, frequent in wife's portraits. The use of this type of veil is also attributed to pregnant or postpartum women. It has no jewels or particular signs of economic ostentation or power.
The position of the Mona Lisa indicates serenity and, together with the sidelong glance, but direct towards the viewer, shows the mastery of feelings, which was not normally attributed to a woman at that time.
The face has no eyebrows. The woman's expression in the picture is enigmatic or ambiguous. This is because the look, the body and the hands are directed at subtly different angles, added to the illusion created by the sfumato technique.
On the left edge of the painting you can see the base of a column implying that the woman is sitting in a gallery.
The background landscape is painted with an aerial perspective. The smoky blue and the unclear and diffuse perspective gives the composition greater depth.
The background landscape shows a certain imbalance, as it creates the illusion of a landscape that is divided into two. However, there is no continuity between them. It seems that there is no correspondence in terms of heights and lines.
Technique
The La Gioconda painting is made in oil painting on wood. Leonardo da Vinci applied the technique of sfumato to him. This consists of superimposing several delicate layers of paint to soften or dilute the contours of the figure and achieve the feeling of naturalness and volume, which allows us to perceive that the figures are integrated into the rest of the composition.
Thanks to the sfumato, Leonardo managed to perfect the perception of three-dimensionality. Leonardo uses the sfumato technique to show how light bounces off curved surfaces, especially the skin, leaving it smooth, soft and natural.
The explanation about the mystery of the smile and the look of the Mona Lisa derives precisely from the technique of sfumato and the nature of human vision.
Indeed, the direct vision of the human being focuses on the details but not on the shadows, however, the peripheral vision distinguishes the shadows more than the details. When looking at the Mona Lisa from different perspectives, the thin and blurred layers of the sfumato technique make an almost inadvertent smile look straight ahead compared to the mysterious smile that appears when viewed sideways. This happens because more volume is projected on the side because of the shadows created by the thin layers.
Meaning of Mona Lisa
The expression "Mona Lisa" means 'Mrs. Lisa'. Mona is a diminutive of the Italian madonna, and Lisa would be the name of the model identified by Giorgio Vasari, painter, architect and writer of the Renaissance who published the book Life of the best Italian architects, painters and sculptors, where he gave testimony of the painting.
The identity of the model
There are several discussions about the identity of the model. Indeed, the most accepted theory is that of the 16th-century Vasari historian, who says that the woman represented would be Lisa Gherardini. And who was Lisa Gherardini? She was the wife of a silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo. In fact, the alternative name La Gioconda, which means "cheerful" in Spanish, refers to her famous smile and the name of her husband.
Another thesis states that the woman portrayed would be a "certain Florentine lady", according to Leonardo's words, and that the piece would have been commissioned by Juliano de Medicis. In that case, it could be a lady of social renown. However, if so, the doubt about their identity would not be understood, since it would be fully identified.
The thing is complicated if we take into account that the contemporary documents that describe the picture could refer to different versions of La Gioconda. It is precisely the existence of such versions one of the factors that gives the piece a mysterious context.
The versions of La Gioconda
The most accepted theory, for being collected in Vasari's work, refers that La Gioconda's painting would have been commissioned by the merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Leonardo would have begun to paint it towards the year 1503. However, when Vasari describes the work, he points out two very important facts: he refers to the existence of eyebrows and indicates that the painting was unfinished.
From Leonardo's time there are two more versions of the painting, called Mona Lisa from Ilseworth and Mona Lisa from the Prado Museum. From the latter, it is known that it is a copy made in Leonardo's workshop by one of his disciples, probably Andrea Salai. It was made between 1503 and 1519 applying the same technique and material conditions: oil on wooden board (walnut), with measures of 76.3 x 57 cm. Some quality differences are visible, such as the difficulty of sfumato.
As for the Mona Lisa of Ilseworth, for a long time it was believed that it was a forgery, among other things because it is made on canvas, unlike that of the Louvre and that of the Prado. However, recent scientific studies reveal that pigments and materials are from the same era. Is it a version of Leonardo himself? In fact, will it be the first version of the painting?
The most obvious differences with the classic Gioconda are three:
the woman, whose face has more defined eyebrows, looks younger;
It is clearly framed between two columns and
The background landscape is unfinished.
In case it was made by Leonardo, it might make sense that it was a first version, if we consider the youth of the model compared to the Gioconda del Louvre and in relation to the years it took Leonardo to develop the painting. The model seems to be the same.
Given this latest fact, the question arises: is it possible that this painting was a first version of the portrait? Could Leonardo have done both portraits at the same time? Since Vasari speaks of an unfinished Gioconda with eyebrows, will he have been able to refer to this or the one that the Louvre guards? If Vasari was referring to the Louvre, would it be, perhaps, that the original Gioconda's eyebrows were accidentally erased during some maintenance or restoration process?
These questions still without satisfactory answer are part of the mysteries surrounding the work that have attracted the attention of the world, but ... are they sufficient to explain the extraordinary phenomenon of diffusion of the painting?
Importance of Gioconda and its influence on art
The genre of the pictorial portrait of personalities, as we know it, took place in the early Renaissance, towards the fourteenth century. It means that by the time Leonardo painted La Gioconda there was already a more or less consolidated portraitist tradition and appropriate to certain conventions. The most common model before the Mona Lisa focused its attention on the representation of the character up to the middle of the torso, so that the face, head and shoulders, covered the entire composition.
The Mona Lisa painting belongs to the genre of the Renaissance portrait, but the way Leonardo da Vinci painted it differs in some aspects of the tradition in which the portraits of women were painted at that time. The woman looks directly at the viewer and smiles at him, two attitudes attributed to aristocratic men rather than women.
The Mona Lisa portrait shows not only the face, head and shoulders, but also the torso below the waist, which reveals arms and hands and, with it, greater expressive possibilities. In this way, Leonardo reveals much of the character, which he would not have succeeded in following the previous model.
However, this was not the only portrait made by Leonardo and, in addition, if we take into account the fact that Leonardo kept it until the end of his days, his influence in those days was only limited to the small circle of people who managed to see it . In any case, we cannot deny that the impact on that circle was significant, to the point that they left written testimony. Therefore, the painter Rafael studied it and took as a reference to elaborate the portrait of Maddalena Doni.
In the original portrait of the Mona Lisa we can see the signs of perfection that Leonardo achieved in the development of the sfumato technique, and in fact, it is believed that, in the end, this painting was worked by Leonardo while painting the famous painting of John Baptist, where he reveals himself as a true master of chiaroscuro. This means that Leonardo's technique would have reached its perfection in these two works. But does its current importance derive only from its technical excellence?
Impact of theft of La Gioconda
It seems that the popularity of the Mona Lisa is of relatively recent attribution, and was catapulted by the theft committed by the Italian Vincenzo Peruggia, a former employee of the Louvre Museum, on August 21, 1911. In fact, the theft was only noticed 24 hours later, which means that the piece did not receive special security attention at the time.
The theft of the Mona Lisa was truly scandalous, both because of the surprise of the theft and the treatment of the investigation, which put two great public figures under suspicion: the young Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso. Apollinaire, in fact, was detained for a week for inquiries. After two years of investigations, the authorities found the whereabouts of Peruggia, who had tried to sell it to Alfredo Geri, then director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
The theft of the Mona Lisa not only put the piece in the sights of the world. It also influenced the assessment of the other versions of the portrait, made by Leonardo or in Leonardo's workshop.
We refer promptly to the aforementioned Mona Lisa of Ilseworth, whose existence was only discovered after the theft. The late appearance of this piece on canvas sowed suspicions about its origin, since many thought it could have been a forgery made during the time when the work of the Louvre was in the hands of Peruggia.
A few years after the return of the piece, now taken into account by the general public as a treasure, the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp and the surrealist Salvador Dalí would give the final blow to consecrate their fame by making each of them an irreverent version.
Thus, the existence of several versions of the same motive, Leonardo's resistance to delivering the work, the significant economic investment of King Francisco I of France to acquire it, Napoleon's desire to see it in his rooms, the robbery perpetrated by Peruggia and the Irreverent parodies of Duchamp and Dalí are part of the context that has influenced the extraordinary dissemination of the work worldwide.
History of the Mona Lisa painting
The Gioconda was prepared by Leonardo between 1503 and 1519. The most accepted thesis suggests that it is an order of the fabric merchant Francesco del Giocondo. As was common in the Renaissance painter, Leonardo never terminated the painting, so he refused to hand it over and was in his possession until the end of his days.
Only after his death, or perhaps shortly before his death, was the painting acquired by King Francis I of France in the sixteenth century, who came to pay twelve thousand francs for it. After the death of Francisco I, the work was destined to Fontainebleau, then to Paris and, finally, to Versailles. After the French Revolution, when considered part of the treasury of the French State, it was handed over to the custody of the Louvre Museum in 1797.
He has remained in the Louvre until today, except for three interruptions: the first, when Napoleon, during his rule, took her to his bedroom (from 1800 to 1804); the second, when it was stolen from the museum by Vicenzo Peruggia (from 1911 until its return in 1914); and the third, during World War II, when he was put in shelter in the castle of Amboise and, later, in the abbey of Loc-Dieu.
Mona Lisa analysis
Description and characteristics
From the point of view of the composition, the Mona Lisa is a portrait of half body, or three quarters, on a landscape that is divided into two atmospheres, one colder (the upper one) and another warmer with earthy colors (the lower).
The position of the woman derives from the "pyramid" used to represent the sitting madonnas, that is, it is a triangular geometrization.
His crossed hands form the base of the pyramidal form. The light applied to the chest and neck is the same applied to the hands.
The center of the frame is the woman's chest and is aligned with the left eye and the fingers of the right hand. This accentuates the presence of the character in the composition.
His left arm is comfortably resting on the arm of the chair and is crossed by the right arm. The position of the arms together with that of the armchair transmit a distance between her and the viewer.
The head is covered by a veil that symbolizes chastity, frequent in wife's portraits. The use of this type of veil is also attributed to pregnant or postpartum women. It has no jewels or particular signs of economic ostentation or power.
The position of the Mona Lisa indicates serenity and, together with the sidelong glance, but direct towards the viewer, shows the mastery of feelings, which was not normally attributed to a woman at that time.
The face has no eyebrows. The woman's expression in the picture is enigmatic or ambiguous. This is because the look, the body and the hands are directed at subtly different angles, added to the illusion created by the sfumato technique.
On the left edge of the painting you can see the base of a column implying that the woman is sitting in a gallery.
The background landscape is painted with an aerial perspective. The smoky blue and the unclear and diffuse perspective gives the composition greater depth.
The background landscape shows a certain imbalance, as it creates the illusion of a landscape that is divided into two. However, there is no continuity between them. It seems that there is no correspondence in terms of heights and lines.
The La Gioconda painting is made in oil painting on wood. Leonardo da Vinci applied the technique of sfumato to him. This consists of superimposing several delicate layers of paint to soften or dilute the contours of the figure and achieve the feeling of naturalness and volume, which allows us to perceive that the figures are integrated into the rest of the composition.
Thanks to the sfumato, Leonardo managed to perfect the perception of three-dimensionality. Leonardo uses the sfumato technique to show how light bounces off curved surfaces, especially the skin, leaving it smooth, soft and natural.
The explanation about the mystery of the smile and the look of the Mona Lisa derives precisely from the technique of sfumato and the nature of human vision.
Indeed, the direct vision of the human being focuses on the details but not on the shadows, however, the peripheral vision distinguishes the shadows more than the details. When looking at the Mona Lisa from different perspectives, the thin and blurred layers of the sfumato technique make an almost inadvertent smile look straight ahead compared to the mysterious smile that appears when viewed sideways. This happens because more volume is projected on the side because of the shadows created by the thin layers.
Meaning of Mona Lisa
The expression "Mona Lisa" means 'Mrs. Lisa'. Mona is a diminutive of the Italian madonna, and Lisa would be the name of the model identified by Giorgio Vasari, painter, architect and writer of the Renaissance who published the book Life of the best Italian architects, painters and sculptors, where he gave testimony of the painting.
The identity of the model
There are several discussions about the identity of the model. Indeed, the most accepted theory is that of the 16th-century Vasari historian, who says that the woman represented would be Lisa Gherardini. And who was Lisa Gherardini? She was the wife of a silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo. In fact, the alternative name La Gioconda, which means "cheerful" in Spanish, refers to her famous smile and the name of her husband.
Another thesis states that the woman portrayed would be a "certain Florentine lady", according to Leonardo's words, and that the piece would have been commissioned by Juliano de Medicis. In that case, it could be a lady of social renown. However, if so, the doubt about their identity would not be understood, since it would be fully identified.
The thing is complicated if we take into account that the contemporary documents that describe the picture could refer to different versions of La Gioconda. It is precisely the existence of such versions one of the factors that gives the piece a mysterious context.
The most accepted theory, for being collected in Vasari's work, refers that La Gioconda's painting would have been commissioned by the merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Leonardo would have begun to paint it towards the year 1503. However, when Vasari describes the work, he points out two very important facts: he refers to the existence of eyebrows and indicates that the painting was unfinished.
From Leonardo's time there are two more versions of the painting, called Mona Lisa from Ilseworth and Mona Lisa from the Prado Museum. From the latter, it is known that it is a copy made in Leonardo's workshop by one of his disciples, probably Andrea Salai. It was made between 1503 and 1519 applying the same technique and material conditions: oil on wooden board (walnut), with measures of 76.3 x 57 cm. Some quality differences are visible, such as the difficulty of sfumato.
As for the Mona Lisa of Ilseworth, for a long time it was believed that it was a forgery, among other things because it is made on canvas, unlike that of the Louvre and that of the Prado. However, recent scientific studies reveal that pigments and materials are from the same era. Is it a version of Leonardo himself? In fact, will it be the first version of the painting?
The most obvious differences with the classic Gioconda are three:
the woman, whose face has more defined eyebrows, looks younger;
It is clearly framed between two columns and
The background landscape is unfinished.
In case it was made by Leonardo, it might make sense that it was a first version, if we consider the youth of the model compared to the Gioconda del Louvre and in relation to the years it took Leonardo to develop the painting. The model seems to be the same.
Given this latest fact, the question arises: is it possible that this painting was a first version of the portrait? Could Leonardo have done both portraits at the same time? Since Vasari speaks of an unfinished Gioconda with eyebrows, will he have been able to refer to this or the one that the Louvre guards? If Vasari was referring to the Louvre, would it be, perhaps, that the original Gioconda's eyebrows were accidentally erased during some maintenance or restoration process?
These questions still without satisfactory answer are part of the mysteries surrounding the work that have attracted the attention of the world, but ... are they sufficient to explain the extraordinary phenomenon of diffusion of the painting?
Importance of Gioconda and its influence on art
The genre of the pictorial portrait of personalities, as we know it, took place in the early Renaissance, towards the fourteenth century. It means that by the time Leonardo painted La Gioconda there was already a more or less consolidated portraitist tradition and appropriate to certain conventions. The most common model before the Mona Lisa focused its attention on the representation of the character up to the middle of the torso, so that the face, head and shoulders, covered the entire composition.
The Mona Lisa painting belongs to the genre of the Renaissance portrait, but the way Leonardo da Vinci painted it differs in some aspects of the tradition in which the portraits of women were painted at that time. The woman looks directly at the viewer and smiles at him, two attitudes attributed to aristocratic men rather than women.
The Mona Lisa portrait shows not only the face, head and shoulders, but also the torso below the waist, which reveals arms and hands and, with it, greater expressive possibilities. In this way, Leonardo reveals much of the character, which he would not have succeeded in following the previous model.
However, this was not the only portrait made by Leonardo and, in addition, if we take into account the fact that Leonardo kept it until the end of his days, his influence in those days was only limited to the small circle of people who managed to see it . In any case, we cannot deny that the impact on that circle was significant, to the point that they left written testimony. Therefore, the painter Rafael studied it and took as a reference to elaborate the portrait of Maddalena Doni.
In the original portrait of the Mona Lisa we can see the signs of perfection that Leonardo achieved in the development of the sfumato technique, and in fact, it is believed that, in the end, this painting was worked by Leonardo while painting the famous painting of John Baptist, where he reveals himself as a true master of chiaroscuro. This means that Leonardo's technique would have reached its perfection in these two works. But does its current importance derive only from its technical excellence?
Impact of theft of La Gioconda
It seems that the popularity of the Mona Lisa is of relatively recent attribution, and was catapulted by the theft committed by the Italian Vincenzo Peruggia, a former employee of the Louvre Museum, on August 21, 1911. In fact, the theft was only noticed 24 hours later, which means that the piece did not receive special security attention at the time.
The theft of the Mona Lisa was truly scandalous, both because of the surprise of the theft and the treatment of the investigation, which put two great public figures under suspicion: the young Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso. Apollinaire, in fact, was detained for a week for inquiries. After two years of investigations, the authorities found the whereabouts of Peruggia, who had tried to sell it to Alfredo Geri, then director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
The theft of the Mona Lisa not only put the piece in the sights of the world. It also influenced the assessment of the other versions of the portrait, made by Leonardo or in Leonardo's workshop.
We refer promptly to the aforementioned Mona Lisa of Ilseworth, whose existence was only discovered after the theft. The late appearance of this piece on canvas sowed suspicions about its origin, since many thought it could have been a forgery made during the time when the work of the Louvre was in the hands of Peruggia.
A few years after the return of the piece, now taken into account by the general public as a treasure, the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp and the surrealist Salvador Dalí would give the final blow to consecrate their fame by making each of them an irreverent version.
Thus, the existence of several versions of the same motive, Leonardo's resistance to delivering the work, the significant economic investment of King Francisco I of France to acquire it, Napoleon's desire to see it in his rooms, the robbery perpetrated by Peruggia and the Irreverent parodies of Duchamp and Dalí are part of the context that has influenced the extraordinary dissemination of the work worldwide.
History of the Mona Lisa painting
The Gioconda was prepared by Leonardo between 1503 and 1519. The most accepted thesis suggests that it is an order of the fabric merchant Francesco del Giocondo. As was common in the Renaissance painter, Leonardo never terminated the painting, so he refused to hand it over and was in his possession until the end of his days.
Only after his death, or perhaps shortly before his death, was the painting acquired by King Francis I of France in the sixteenth century, who came to pay twelve thousand francs for it. After the death of Francisco I, the work was destined to Fontainebleau, then to Paris and, finally, to Versailles. After the French Revolution, when considered part of the treasury of the French State, it was handed over to the custody of the Louvre Museum in 1797.
He has remained in the Louvre until today, except for three interruptions: the first, when Napoleon, during his rule, took her to his bedroom (from 1800 to 1804); the second, when it was stolen from the museum by Vicenzo Peruggia (from 1911 until its return in 1914); and the third, during World War II, when he was put in shelter in the castle of Amboise and, later, in the abbey of Loc-Dieu.
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