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>.