Art History: Renaissance to the Present

Essay #2 Chris Wing Nok Cheung

Leonoardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) is universally known as

the Renaissance Man—a distinguished man whose scope

of explorations and achievements encompasses multiple

aspects of subjects, for instance: painting, sculpture,

architecture, science, engineering, to name but a few.

Despite the small amount, often incomplete outputs that

are known to us, these works have monumental influence and legacy, due to

his mastery and ability to synthesize his interest in nature, art, and science all

into his own unique language that continue to amaze us. Out of the works that

are known nowadays, one could hardly resist to say that

Mona Lisa is probably his most famed work. Sitting

behind the bulletproof glass in the Louvre today, the

portrait has ignited infinite discussions encircling it even

nowadays. The focus of this essay is to briefly retrace

its history, and discuss why ‘she’ is so famous from both

a technical and aesthetic vantage point.

Several portraits that Leonardo has completed before

Mona Lisa roughly during his First Milanese period, c.

1482-99, include Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine, Virgin

of the Rocks, etc. The former one was a painting of

Ludovico Sforza’s mistress Cecillia Gallerani, where it

possesses a ‘remarkable harmony of line, space, light and colour, without

compromising the natural observation of forms and textures’1, besides being

an elegant painting by itself. On the other hand, the

Virgin of the Rocks was a much more mystical painting

—it was probably ‘the most advanced expression to

date of Leonardo’s insistence on the dominance of tone

over colour’1. Nevertheless, his scrutiny and will to

present figures in their most natural form remained the

same. Given this context before the arrival of Mona

Lisa, Leonardo had started to become mature with his signature sfumato

painting style as one can see in Virgin of the Rocks. This style is closely

linked to Mona Lisa, which I will illustrate in greater detail in later paragraphs.

It was during the Second Florentine period, 1500-mid-1508, when he started

curating Mona Lisa until 1519.

As one could argue that Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the

world, its fame and distinction that outdid numerous other excellent artworks

is like an aura of mystery. In my own perspective, I believe that its popularity

is due to a combination of factors: Leonardo’s exceptional aesthetic vision in

Mona Lisa, use of painting techniques, the mystery of the sitter’s identity, and

the overall enigmatic quality of the painting.

In Mona Lisa, Leonardo has intricately incorporated seemingly contrasting

values into a harmonious painting masterfully.

Firstly, the portrait of Mona Lisa—representing the human body could be

interpreted as a resemblance and a miniature of the world as a whole.

Leonardo was known for his fascination of the ancient idea of microcosm1,

which means the miniature of something much bigger than itself. Here, the

contrast between the an individual and the world as a whole is being reduced

and unified with the ‘curvaceous flow in the hair, draperies, embroidery

patterns’1 to resemble the flowing rivers and valleys in

the background, and it could imply that the human body

was a reflection or imitation of the motion and processes

of the world in a reduced scale.

Secondly, Leonardo skillfully eliminated the disparity

between the natural representation and the idealistic

aspiration of human. The idea was being put into the painting very subtly; if

one observe the painting thoroughly, he or she would have noticed that the

composition of the portrait herself would in fact form a triangle—but it is more

than a triangle, but a pyramid. The pyramid has symbolic and religious

meaning owing to its composition, namely the Trinity, Evangelists and the

Disciples as one can deduce from the number of sides in a pyramid.

Therefore, it implies an idealistic idea—putting it into context, it implies the

level of perfection that human can aspire to become. Here, the smooth,

natural and convincing painting of the portrait is seamlessly merged with this

underlining idealistic aspiration. In a nutshell, this interplay of values in Mona

Lisa is sophisticated yet harmonious and innovative. The

fact that Leonardo had provided the bridge between our

universal values and the particularity of a person in this

painting makes it fascinating for people of many

generations. The thought-out architecture within the

painting also set a model for portrait painting for many painters that came

after Leonardo—Raphael, for instance, was one of the then younger painters

who was attracted to the man’s work and clearly adopted Mona Lisa into his

Portrait of Maddalena Doni.

On the other hand, the sfumato technique applied in Mona Lisa is one

important contribution to our perception of the painting, and stimulated an

academia that kept on researching on the subject.

Leonardo was an expert on applying this technique to create his trademark,

‘smoky’ style; by applying numerous layers of thin glaze, he was able to

achieve an atmospheric haziness in his artworks, with Mona Lisa in particular.

It creates a sense of tranquility and smoothness to the portrait, almost making

the painting movable as the blurredness might suggest motion. It is sfumato

that makes the whole portrait looks and feels changeable, in an intriguing and

mystical way. On one hand, it made the ‘Mona Lisa’ smile very famous to the

public as the smile seemed noticeable and imperceptible at the same time,

depending on the various angles that the audience is at. On the other hand,

scientists have long been fascinated and interested at discovering the exact

techniques that Leonardo employed the sfumato effect.2

Omitting the aesthetic and technical rationales that made Mona Lisa so

celebrated, the mystery surrounding the real identity of the sitter aroused

rounds of speculations and hypothesis as well, ever since it was painted.

Whether or not the identity is confirmed, the enthusiasm to uncover this

mystery made the painting even more controversial and well known today.

One of the most agreed interpretations was that the woman is Lisa del

Giocondo, wife of a merchant in Florentine named Francesco di Bartolomeo

del Giocondo, since Mona Lisa holds an alternative title named La Gioconda

as put forth by artist biographer Giorgio Vasari in 1550. However, even this

popular argument was being doubted throughout the years—‘For seventy-five

years, experts had doubted Giogio Vasari’s identification of the sitter…

Scholars continued to call it Mona Lisa only because there was no better

alternative’. 3 Nevertheless, several scholars backed Vasari’s argument by

investigating death dates of Lisa and her husband Francesco to prove that

Vasari’s ‘account was based on information that they provided.’ 3 Other

speculations include the sitter as Leonardo’s mother Caterina owing to the

smile of Mona Lisa that resembles Caterina’s; it was even suggested that it

could be a self-portrait of Leonardo’s—as varied as the interpretations could

be, the artist’s riddle remains unresolved.

What is certain to us is that owing to the aforementioned reasons, the

popularity and importance of Mona Lisa has caused a craze for the general

public or art researchers to attempt constantly in order to find the answer;

scientists even attempted to open the tomb of the Giocondo family in order to

unveil the DNA of Lisa del Giocondo to obtain an image of hers!

The innovation, aesthetics, artistry are the factors that made Mona Lisa still

standing tall as the quintessential woman of the history of western art; the

level of artistic mastery that was being put into it by Leonardo da Vinci would

have surely contributed to ‘her’ fame, even without taking account of the

mystery and controversies that surrounds it. The harmonious integration of

universal values, the extraordinary painting techniques, and all the other

artistic qualities embodied in Mona Lisa will carry on to be studied and

praised, surviving the test of time.

Bibliography

1Martin Kemp. "Leonardo da Vinci." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press.Web. 8 Apr. 2015. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T050401>.

2Gray, Richard. “The Secret behind Mona Lisa’s Smile.” The Telegraph.Telegraph Media Group, 22 Aug. 2010. Web. 07 Apr. 2015. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/7957801/The-secret-behind-Mona-Lisas-smile.html>.

3Greenstein, Jack M. “Leonardo, Mona Lisa and “La Gioconda”. Reviewing the Evidence.” (2004): 17-38. Artibus Et Historiae. Web. 7 Apr. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1483789>.