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The Mona Lisa and The Techniques That Immortalize It

Kari Powell Dr. Carey Rote May 2, 2011

Over the course of Mona Lisas existence, the painting has been admired and

awed for its technique and how that has shaped not only the existing artwork into one that offers unprecedented realism and accuracy, but the continuing generations of artwork after it. New forms of achieving realism meant more space for exploring ideas and styles that evolved into different eras of art. The Mona Lisa captures Leonardo Da Vincis poignant uses of techniques such as chiaroscuro, sfumato, and atmospheric perspective that changes how artists perceive forms from their eyes to their canvas and inspires a legacy of realistic creativity called Mannerism. ! The Mona Lisa was created during the Renaissance in Florence, one of the

central hubs and birthplaces for the new thoughts and techniques the new era offered artists. 15th century developments in art explored anatomy, classicism, and perspective. Renaissance art pervaded much of the 16th century as well until Mannerism ourished and set off a specic style that relied less on the naturalism that was sought after in the Renaissance, but rather ambiguous space, departures from expected conventions, and unique presentations of traditional themes (Kleiner, 623). ! Mona Lisa was painted about 500 years ago between 1503-1505 and depicts a

young Florentine woman dressed in typical garments of the time seated in front of a terrace or balcony with columns at either side of her, which were cropped out of the composition later by someone other than Da Vinci. Her identity is argued as Lisa di Antonio Maria Gherardini, wife of a wealthy merchant. The background comprises a mysterious, mountainous landscape with pathways and bridges whose ends are unseen or nonexistent. Although, renaissance etiquette dictated that a woman should not look directly into a mans eyes (Kleiner, 583), she gazes boldly yet serenely at the viewer,

commanding for his eyes to meet hers. Without revealing any wealth or status, Mona Lisa attracts recognition from her haunting gaze and poised smile exuding from her otherwise demure, quite pose with hands folded across the lap. The painting does not capture the existence of a everyday merchants wife, but rather a Late Renaissance woman with a smile that hints at sometimes irting with liberating thoughts such as feminism and a more modest, wistful approach. Da Vincis painting expresses an honest portrait representing an individual not described with jewelry or surrounded by secular objects but with a magnetic aura achieved through his techniques of atmospheric perspective, chiaroscuro, and sfumato. ! Throughout time, art critics and the general public alike have become fascinated

and perplexed with Mona Lisas all-knowing gaze and amused, changing smile, which seems both alluring and aloof (Brewers curious titles, 1). Her face remains the subject of literature, plays, and popular culture. As poetically expressed by George B. Rose, her mouth forms a smile that is only on the lips, while in the eyes there are unsounded depths. Vainly we question her; like the Sphinx her riddle eludes us still. Many people claim to see her smile as a grin to becoming vanished completely, and according to Queiros-Conde, Mona Lisa, especially her smile and gaze, changes: the smile can disappear or be strangely amplied. The face takes on very different expressions due to its intrinsic plasticity. The painting be- haves like a sand dune, constantly reorganizing itself after each blink (225). He performs scientic studies on Mona Lisas hidden faces and how she can attain different expressions based on different light settings, perspectives from peripheral or frontal vision, and Leonardo Da Vincis immense understanding of sfumato and chiaroscuro, the differing intensities of shadow painted in

The Last Supper -Leonardo Da Vinci

independent layers and how it molds composition. ! Chiaroscuro involves deeply shaded modeling that is a sustaining relationship

between light and dark parts of the composition. Depending on the artist and their experience, chiaroscuro has the ability to render painted subjects extremely lifelike. Before, Da Vinci, artists such as Boticelli, Mantegna, and Masaccio all possessed incredible experience, patience, and the ability to draw with precise proportions, paint observations accurately, and apply color and perspective. However all of their gures seem stiff and almost mannequin-like, at and two-dimensional. Many tried to solve this issue, like Boticelli arranging his painted fabric and hair to ow and soften the harsh lines of his gures. But Da Vinci reasoned that by blurring the edges and the light that hit them so that forms could almost seamlessly blend brought the greatest realism and vivacity to artwork yet. He also added darkness from the sfumato technique to give the

Portrait of Young Woman With Unicorn -Raphael Sanzio

! !

Mona Lisa -Leonardo Da Vinci

Mona Lisa depth and a realistically eerie atmosphere. In the Mona Lisa, chiaroscuro creates realistic molding of the face and body in relation to its environment. Sfumato creates varied valleys and trenches of undulating shadow that gives her different expressions based on ones viewpoint, angle, and time of day. ! Different types of perspective were studied and developed by Filippo

Brunelleschi before Da Vincis new method of shading, and consists of one and two point perspective. One-point perspective is illustrated in Leonardo Da Vincis The Last Supper, in which a vanishing point disappears at one source, in this case at Jesus, and extends in width and length towards the viewer by diagonal lines called orthagonals. By establishing diagonal lines from the vanishing point in a grid-like fashion, Da Vinci could

attain more accurate proportions and also could achieve depth and precision from an architectural standpoint. Another method of perspective was two-point, which essentially contained two different vanishing points on the horizon line and offered more threedimensional qualities to the forms in the composition. ! Atmospheric perspective is the mysterious quality Da Vinci and others such as

Masaccio use that relies more on optical phenomena than a structured mathematical system (Kleiner, 547). This type of perspective reasons that the farther an object is in the background, the less clear and detailed it appears, sometimes bluer. Colors fade and values decrease as well. Conversely, an object will look more colorful, brighter in hue, sharp, and highly contrasted when it is in the foreground. However, the key to achieving this method is, again, in the subtle blue tint incorporated into the background. The Mona Lisa contains this blue tint in the disappearing haze engulng the vegetation and waters as well a Raphaels Portrait of Young Woman with Unicorn, which pictures mountains clouded in a fading fog. ! The Renaissance was a period of artistic geniuses such as Raphael and Da

Vinci. While Raphael focused more on clear, bright colors and tones, Da Vinci delved into atmospheric perspective and chiaroscuro, atypical of most Venetian artists preference of colorito, primary importance to utilizing color and its application. Said to have been inspired by the Mona Lisa, Raphaels Portrait of Young Woman with Unicorn was painted in 1506 and depicts Saint Catherine of Alexandria as she holds a unicorn, a medieval symbol of purity akin to Saint Catherines wheel that was mistaken as a dog before when the painting was being restored, still a positive sign meaning delity and

loyalty. The woman contains the same posture, pose, and the composition lies in a similar background. Before they were trimmed in later times, the Mona Lisa contained columns on either side of the gure and similar columns can be seen in Raphaels piece. ! The Mona Lisa is a piece most critics have called unparalleled and magnicent

in every detail, whose face can be recognized internationally. However, without understanding Leonardos techniques he incorporated and the developments he made, appreciation cannot truly be garnered. Da Vinci created a lasting impact on realism and established a foundation for heightened means of observation and transcribing them in the future. The Mona Lisa evokes a small spark of feminism in her direct gaze, a presence of immortality from chiaroscuro, sfumato, and atmospheric perspective, and an everlasting hold on her viewers as a painting that symbolized a new era of realism and progress.

Bibliography
George Boas. (1940).

The Mona Lisa in the History of Taste. Journal of the History of Ideas.

Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 207-224. Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press. Article Stable URL: <http://0-www.jstor.org.portal.tamucc.edu/stable/2707333>.

Mona Lisa. (2002). In Brewer's Curious Titles. Retrieved from <http://0

www.credoreference.com.portal.tamucc.edu/entry/orioncurious/mona_lisa>.

Kleiner, F.S. (2009). Gardner's art through the ages: a global history. Boston, Massachusetts:
Wadesworth, Cengage Learning.

Queiros-Conde, Diogo. (2004). The turbulent structure of sfumato within mona lisa. Leonardo
37(3), 223-228. Retrieved January 21, 2011, from Project MUSE database.