The 16th-century portrait Mona Lisa , or La Gioconda (La Joconde), painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo da Vinci, has been the subject of a considerable deal of speculation. [1]
The 16th-century portrait Mona Lisa , or La Gioconda (La Joconde), painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo da Vinci, has been the subject of a considerable deal of speculation. [1]
It has for a long time been argued that after Leonardo's death the painting was cut down by having part of the panel at both sides removed. Early copies depict columns on both sides of the figure. Only the edges of the bases can be seen in the original. [2] However, some art historians, such as Martin Kemp, now argue that the painting has not been altered, and that the columns depicted in the copies were added by the copyists. The latter view was bolstered during 2004 and 2005 when an international team of 39 specialists undertook the most thorough scientific examination of the Mona Lisa yet undertaken. Beneath the frame (the current one was fitted to the Mona Lisa in 2004) there was discovered a "reserve" around all four edges of the panel. A reserve is an area of bare wood surrounding the gessoed and painted portion of the panel. That this is a genuine reserve, and not the result of removal of the gesso or paint, is demonstrated by a raised edge still existing around the gesso, the result of build up from the edge of brush strokes at the edge of the gesso area.
The reserve area, which was likely to have been as much as 20 mm (0.79 in) originally appears to have been trimmed at some point probably to fit a frame (in the 1906 framing it was the frame itself that was trimmed, not the picture, so it must have been earlier), however at no point has any of Leonardo's actual paint been trimmed. Therefore, the columns in early copies must be inventions of those artists, or copies of another (unknown) studio version of Mona Lisa. [ citation needed ]
People of Arezzo in the Val di Chiana, a valley in Tuscany, have traditionally claimed the Mona Lisa landscape as theirs. An article published in the journal Cartographica suggests that the landscape consists of two parts which when placed together correspond to Leonardo's topographic map, the Val di Chiana. [3]
It has been suggested that Leonardo created more than one version of the painting. Another contender is the Isleworth Mona Lisa , which had been hidden in a Swiss bank vault for 40 years before being unveiled to the public on September 27, 2012. [4] The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has dated the piece to Leonardo's lifetime, and an expert in sacred geometry says it conforms to the artist's basic line structures. [5] [6]
The same claim has been made for a version in the Vernon collection. [7] The Vernon Mona Lisa is particularly interesting because it was originally part of the collection at the Louvre. Another version, dating from c. 1616, was given in c. 1790 to Joshua Reynolds by the Duke of Leeds in exchange for a Reynolds self-portrait. Reynolds thought it to be the real painting and the French one a copy, which has now been disproved. It is, however, useful in that it was copied when the original's colors were far brighter than they are now, and so it gives some sense of the original's appearance 'as new'. It is in a private collection, but was exhibited in 2006 at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. [8]
In January 2012 Museo del Prado in Madrid found a copy of the painting, believed by a pupil of Leonardo, which may have been painted in Leonardo's presence. [9] The copy gives a better indication of what the portrait looked like at the time, as the varnish on the original has become cracked and yellowed with age. [10]
German imaging researchers Claus-Christian Carbon of the University of Bamberg and Vera Hesslinger of the University of Mainz performed further analysis of the Museo del Prado version, comparing it to Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and in May 2014 speculated that, based on perspective analysis of key features in the images, the two images were painted at the same time from slightly different viewpoints. They further proposed that two images may therefore form a stereoscopic pair, creating the illusion of 3-dimensional depth, when viewed side by side. [11] However, a study published in 2017 has demonstrated that this stereoscopic pair in fact gives no reliable stereoscopic depth. [12]
There are several copies of the image in which the figure appears nude. These have also led to speculation that they were copied from a lost Leonardo original depicting Lisa naked. [13] These include:
Mona Lisa's smile has repeatedly been a subject of many—greatly varying—interpretations. Many researchers have tried to explain why the smile is seen so differently by people. The explanations range from scientific theories about human vision to curious supposition about Mona Lisa's identity and feelings.
Professor Margaret Livingstone of Harvard University has argued that the smile is mostly drawn in low spatial frequencies, and so can best be seen from a distance or with one's peripheral vision. Thus, for example, the smile appears more striking when looking at the portrait's eyes than when looking at the mouth itself. [14] [15] [16] Christopher Tyler and Leonid Kontsevich of the Smith-Kettlewell Institute in San Francisco believe that the changing nature of the smile is caused by variable levels of random noise in the human visual system. [17] Dina Goldin, Adjunct Professor at Brown University, has argued that the secret is in the dynamic position of Mona Lisa's facial muscles, where our mind's eye unconsciously extends her smile; the result is an unusual dynamicity to the face that invokes subtle yet strong emotions in the viewer of the painting. [18]
In late 2005, Dutch researchers from the University of Amsterdam ran the painting's image through "emotion recognition" computer software developed in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The technology demonstration found the smile to be 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful, 2% angry, less than 1% neutral, and 0% surprised. [19] [20]
In 2004, experts from the National Research Council of Canada conducted a three-dimensional infrared scan. Because of the aging of the varnish on the painting it is difficult to discern details. Data from the scan and infrared were used by Bruno Mottin of the French Museums' "Center for Research and Restoration" to argue that the transparent gauze veil worn by the sitter is a guarnello, typically used by women while pregnant or just after giving birth. A similar guarnello was painted by Sandro Botticelli in his Portrait of Smeralda Brandini (c. 1470/1475), depicting a pregnant woman, on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. [21] Furthermore, this reflectography revealed that Mona Lisa's hair is not loosely hanging down, but seems attached at the back of the head to a bonnet or pinned back into a chignon and covered with a veil, bordered with a sombre rolled hem. In the 16th century, hair hanging loosely down on the shoulders was the customary style of unmarried young women or prostitutes. This apparent contradiction with her status as a married woman has now been resolved.
Researchers also used the data to reveal details about the technique used and to predict that the painting will degrade very little if current conservation techniques are continued. [22] [23] During 2006, the Mona Lisa underwent a major scientific observation that proved through infrared cameras she was originally wearing a bonnet and clutching her chair, something that da Vinci decided to change as an afterthought. [24]
One long-standing mystery of the painting is why Mona Lisa features very faint eyebrows and apparently does not have any eyelashes. In October 2007, Pascal Cotte, a French engineer and inventor, says he discovered with a high-definition camera that Leonardo da Vinci originally did paint eyebrows and eyelashes. Creating an ultra-high resolution close-up that magnified Mona Lisa's face 24 times, Cotte says he found a single brushstroke of a single hair above the left eye. "One day I say, if I can find only one hair, only one hair of the eyebrow, I will have definitively the proof that originally Leonardo da Vinci had painted eyelash and eyebrow," said Cotte. The engineer claims that other eyebrow hairs that potentially could have appeared on the painting may have faded or been inadvertently erased by a poor attempt to clean the painting. In addition, Cotte says his work uncovered proof that her hands were originally painted in a slightly different position than in the final portrait. [25]
Giorgio Vasari's Lives of Artists describes the painting as having thick eyebrows; however, while this may mean that the eyebrows and lashes were accidentally removed, it could also mean that Vasari did not have first-hand knowledge of the work.
Although the sitter has traditionally been identified as Lisa del Giocondo, a lack of definitive evidence has long fueled alternative theories. During the last years of his life, Leonardo spoke of a portrait "of a certain Florentine lady done from life at the request of the magnificent Giuliano de' Medici." No evidence has been found that indicates a link between Lisa del Giocondo and Giuliano de' Medici, but then the comment could instead refer to one of the two other portraits of women executed by Leonardo.
The artist Susan Dorothea White has interpreted the masculine proportions of Mona Lisa's cranial architecture in her anatomical artworks Anatomy of a Smile: Mona's Bones (2002) and Mona Masticating (2006). [26] Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs suggests that the Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait. She supports this theory with the results of a digital analysis of the facial features of the woman in the painting and those of the famous Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk . However, the drawing on which Schwartz based the comparison may not be a self-portrait. [27]
For Sigmund Freud the famous half-smile was a recovered memory of Leonardo's mother. [28] In 1994 Leonardo's biographer Serge Bramly wrote, "there are about a dozen possible identifications of the sitter, all more or less defensible ... Some people have suggested that there was no model at all, that Leonardo was painting an ideal woman." [29]
In 2004, historian Giuseppe Pallanti published Monna Lisa, Mulier Ingenua (published in English as Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo's Model). [30] The book gathered archival evidence in support of the traditional identification of the model as Lisa. According to Pallanti, the evidence suggests that Leonardo's father was a friend of del Giocondo: "The portrait of Mona Lisa, done when Lisa del Giocondo was aged about 24, was probably commissioned by Leonardo's father himself for his friends as he is known to have done on at least one other occasion." [31] [32] In 2007, genealogist Domenico Savini identified the princesses Natalia and Irina Strozzi as descendants of Lisa del Giocondo. [33] Scan data obtained in 2004 suggested that the painting dated from around 1503 and commemorated the birth of the Giocondo's second son. [34] [35]
In 2011, art historian Silvano Vinceti claimed longtime apprentice (and possible lover) to Leonardo, Salaì, was the inspiration and figure for the painting. [36]
In 2005 Heidelberg University academics discovered notes scribbled into the margins of a book by its owner in October 1503. [37] These notes state that Leonardo is working "on the head of Lisa del Giocondo". This is seen by some as confirmation that a certain Lisa del Giocondo had been the sitter for the Mona Lisa. However, these notes offer no description of the painting or drawing and could be attributed to any female portrait of that time.
In 2011, after the discovery of old documents that indicated that Lisa del Giocondo was buried beneath a convent in Florence, an excavation was performed. [38]
In 2014, Angelo Paratico suggested that Leonardo's mother (probably Mona Lisa) was a Chinese slave. It has also been suggested that she was a Middle Eastern slave. [39]
Isabella d'Este (1474–1539) was Margravine of Mantua and the most famous patron of the arts of her time. Leonardo was her sister Beatrice d'Este's court painter in the Duchy of Milan. In 1499, after the expulsion of the Sforza (his employers), Leonardo fled to the court of Isabella d'Este. [40] Over a period of three months, Leonardo made several portrait drawings of Isabella (documented by letters). [41] One of these drawings, a profile drawing, is preserved in the Louvre and shows similarities. [42]
From the subsequent years 1501 to 1506, several letters survive in which Isabella—directly and through agents—pursued Leonardo with demands for the promised execution of the (oil) portrait (and her agents promised or also confirmed Leonardo's commencement). [43] The Mona Lisa falls precisely within this period. In 1504 Isabella d'Este announced more interest in another motif, which is consistent with the whereabouts of the painting called Mona Lisa with Leonardo. [44]
The hierarchical society of the Renaissance makes the portrait of an upper-class noblewoman more likely than the wife of a modestly merchant, especially for the Mona Lisa. [45]
The Louvre's caveat is Isabella d'Este's alleged blonde hair. [46] Yet Isabella's portraits Ambras miniature [47] and Isabella in Red represent brown hair and also further similarities. [48] Blonde hair is now only depicted in Titian's retrospective portrait Isabella in Black . Despite its circulation, this identification is disputed (outside the documentation of its own museum), as the head shows neither idealisation by beauty nor similarities with the two colour portraits mentioned above. [49]
In January 2010, Dr Vito Franco, professor of pathological anatomy at Palermo University, published research in an article in La Stampa newspaper and at a medical conference in Florence which suggested that the subject showed clear signs of xanthelasma, small accumulations of cholesterol-rich material under the skin, perhaps caused by problems in her biliary tract, due to hyperlipidemia, an inherited metabolic disorder. Dr Franco also suggested that she shows signs of having a lipoma behind her right eye. [50]
In December 2010, Italian art historian Silvano Vinceti reported that the Mona Lisa appears to have tiny letters and numbers in her eyes which are only apparent when viewed with a magnifying glass and shortly afterwards said that the model was Leonardo's male apprentice Gian Giacomo Caprotti (known as Salaì) and that the letters were clues to his identity. The Louvre, pointing out that he had had no access to the actual painting, said that after "every laboratory test possible" in 2004 and 2009 that "no inscriptions, letters or numbers, were discovered during the tests." and that "The ageing of the painting on wood has caused a great number of cracks to appear in the paint, which have caused a number of shapes to appear that have often been subject to over-interpretation". [51] [52]
Isabella d'Este was the Marchioness of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure.
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become 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, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, [and] the most parodied work of art in the world". The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.
La Belle Ferronnière is a portrait of a lady, usually attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, in the Louvre. It is also known as Portrait of an Unknown Woman. The painting's title, applied as early as the seventeenth century, identifying the sitter as the wife or daughter of an ironmonger, was said to be discreetly alluding to a reputed mistress of Francis I of France, married to a certain Le Ferron. Later she was identified as Lucretia Crivelli, a married lady-in-waiting to Duchess Beatrice of Milan, who became another of the Duke's mistresses.
Lisa del Giocondo was an Italian noblewoman and member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany. Her name was given to the Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the Italian Renaissance.
Mona Lisa, Op. 31, is a 1915 opera by the German composer Max von Schillings on a libretto by Beatrice von Dovsky. It was dedicated to the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Heidelberg, where the composer was awarded the title of professor.
The Isleworth Mona Lisa is an early 16th-century oil on canvas painting depicting the same subject as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, though with the subject depicted as being a younger age. The painting is thought to have been brought from Italy to England in the 1780s, and came into public view in 1913 when the English connoisseur Hugh Blaker acquired it from a manor house in Somerset, where it was thought to have been hanging for over a century. The painting would eventually adopt its unofficial name of Isleworth Mona Lisa from Blaker's studio being in Isleworth, West London. Since the 1910s, experts in various fields, as well as the collectors who have acquired ownership of the painting, have asserted that the major elements of the painting are the work of Leonardo himself, as an earlier version of the Mona Lisa.
Agostino Vespucci was a Florentine chancellery official, clerk, and assistant to Niccolò Machiavelli, among others. He is most well known for helping to confirm the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as Lisa del Giocondo, but is also the author of a number of surviving letters and manuscripts.
Isabella in Black is a portrait of a young woman by Titian. It can be dated to the 1530s and is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The artist and the date are undisputed. Beyond the museum documentation, there are repeated doubts about the person depicted.
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, better known as Salaì was an Italian artist and pupil of Leonardo da Vinci from 1490 to 1518. Salaì entered Leonardo's household at the age of ten. He created paintings under the name of Andrea Salaì. He was described as one of Leonardo's students and lifelong companion and servant and was the model for Leonardo's St. John the Baptist,Bacchus and Angelo incarnato.
La Scapigliata is an unfinished painting generally attributed to the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, and dated c. 1506–1508. Painted in oil, umber, and white lead pigments on a small poplar wood panel, its attribution remains controversial, with several experts attributing the work to a pupil of Leonardo. The painting has been admired for its captivating beauty, mysterious demeanor, and mastery of sfumato.
Salvator Mundi is a painting attributed in whole or in part to the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1499–1510. Long thought to be a copy of a lost original veiled with overpainting, it was rediscovered, restored, and included in an exhibition of Leonardo's work at the National Gallery, London, in 2011–2012. Christie's, who sold the work in 2017, stated that most leading scholars consider it an original work by Leonardo, but this attribution has been disputed by other leading specialists, some of whom propose that he only contributed certain elements; and others who believe that the extensive restoration prevents a definitive attribution.
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is one of the most recognizable and famous works of art in the world, and also one of the most replicated and reinterpreted. Mona Lisa replicas were already being painted during Leonardo's lifetime by his own students and contemporaries. Some are claimed to be the work of Leonardo himself, and remain disputed by scholars. Prominent 20th-century artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dalí have also produced derivative works, manipulating Mona Lisa's image to suit their own aesthetic. Replicating Renaissance masterpieces continues to be a way for aspiring artists to perfect their painting techniques and prove their skills.
The Smile (2008) is a Young Adult novel by Donna Jo Napoli that details a slice of the life of Monna Elisabetta, better known as the Mona Lisa. Some historical figures enter the plot, including Leonardo da Vinci and members of the famous Medici family. Set in Renaissance Florence, it follows Elisabetta's life up to the moment she models for da Vinci's painting, and suggests the secret behind her famous smile.
Here below is a chronology of fictional and semi-fictional stories that revolve, either wholly or partially, around the famous Mona Lisa, a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Renaissance in Florence. The years listed on the left refer to the year of release of these works of fiction.
The Prado Mona Lisa is a painting by the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci and depicts the same subject and composition as Leonardo's better known Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Paris. The Prado Mona Lisa has been in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain since 1819, but was considered for decades a relatively unimportant copy. Following its restoration in 2012, however, the Prado's Mona Lisa has come to be understood as the earliest known studio copy of Leonardo's masterpiece.
The two–Mona Lisa theory is a longstanding theory proposed by various historians, art experts, and others that Leonardo da Vinci painted two versions of the Mona Lisa. Several of these experts have further concluded that examination of historical documents indicates that one version was painted several years before the second.
Dr. Henry Franz Pulitzer (1899–1979) was an Austrian-born gallery owner and "avid art collector", and connoisseur, described by one source as a "media mogul". He was the owner of the Pulitzer galleries in London and Bern, Switzerland, and of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, a painting famous for the claim passed down from its previous owners that there was evidence that it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. Pulitzer himself took up the cause of proving the claimed provenance of the painting, including writing a book in support of it, but his efforts did not lead to acceptance of the claim during his lifetime.
Vincent Delieuvin is a French author and art historian specializing in the work of Leonardo da Vinci, and in Italian paintings of the sixteenth century, generally. Since 2006, he has worked as a heritage curator at the Louvre museum.
There are two theories revolving around the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci which postulate that the subject of the painting was actually a man. Leonardo is known for having a number of conspiracy theories formed around his life and his art, and the Mona Lisa has attracted an especially high number of these. Many of the theories surrounding the Mona Lisa stem from how art historians have still not conclusively determined the sitter's identity. The commonly accepted explanation is that she was Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a silk merchant from Florence named Francesco del Giocondo; however, without irrefutable proof there are still an array of alternative theories. While many theories uphold the assumption that the model for the Mona Lisa was a woman, there are two theories which propose that the sitter may have been a man in drag. One theory is that the model for the portrait was Leonardo's longtime apprentice and suspected lover, Gian Giacomo Caprotti, also known by the nickname Salai. The other theory is that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of Leonardo as a woman. Neither of these theories is well received by most art historians.
