Everything about Mona Lisa totally explained
Mona Lisa (also known as
La Gioconda) is a 16th century
portrait painted in
oil on a
poplar panel by
Leonardo Da Vinci during the
Italian Renaissance. The work is owned by the
French government and hangs in the
Musée du Louvre in
Paris,
France with the title
Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.
The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a woman whose expression is often described as enigmatic. The ambiguity of the sitter's expression, the monumentality of the half-figure composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the painting's continuing fascination.
Historical context
Leonardo da Vinci began painting the
Mona Lisa in 1503 (during the Italian Renaissance) and, according to Vasari, "after he'd lingered over it four years, left it unfinished...." Leonardo took the painting from Italy to France in 1516 when King
François I invited the painter to work at the
Clos Lucé near the king's castle in
Amboise. Most likely through the heirs of Leonardo's assistant Salai, the king bought the painting for 4,000
écus and kept it at
Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV.
Louis XIV moved the painting to the
Palace of Versailles. After the
French Revolution, it was moved to the Louvre.
Napoleon I had it moved to his bedroom in the
Tuileries Palace; later it was returned to the Louvre. During the
Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) it was moved from the Louvre to a hiding place elsewhere in France.
Mona Lisa wasn't well known until the mid-19th century when artists of the emerging
Symbolist movement began to appreciate it, and associated it with their ideas about feminine mystique. Critic
Walter Pater, in his 1867 essay on Leonardo, expressed this view by describing the figure in the painting as a kind of mythic embodiment of eternal femininity, who is "older than the rocks among which she sits" and who "has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave."
Subject and title
Mona Lisa is named for
Lisa del Giocondo,
a member of the Gherardini family of
Florence and
Tuscany and the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo.
The sitter's identity was ascertained at the
University of Heidelberg in 2005 by a library expert who discovered a 1503 margin note written by Agostino Vespucci. and several people as its subject.
Isabella of Naples or Aragon,
Cecilia Gallerani, Costanza d'Avalos—who was also called the "merry one" or La Gioconda, Today the subject's identity is held with certainty to be Lisa, which was always the traditional view. (one version in ). In Italian,
ma donna means
my lady. This became
madonna, and its contraction
mona.
Mona is thus a polite form of address, similar to
Ma’am,
Madam, or
my lady in English. In modern Italian, the short form of
madonna is usually spelled
Monna, so the title is sometimes
Monna Lisa, rarely in English and more commonly in
Romance languages such as French and Italian.
At his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant Salai owned the portrait named in his personal papers
la Gioconda which had been bequeathed to him by the artist. Italian for jocund, happy or jovial, Gioconda was a nickname for the sitter, a pun on the feminine form of her married name Giocondo and her disposition. In French, the title
La Joconde has the same double meaning.
Aesthetics
Leonardo used a pyramid design to place the woman simply and calmly in the space of the painting. Her folded hands form the front corner of the pyramid. Her breast, neck and face glow in the same light that models her hands. The light gives the variety of living surfaces an underlying geometry of spheres and circles. Leonardo referred to a seemingly simple formula for seated female figure: the images of seated Madonna, which were widespread at the time. He effectively modified this formula in order to create the visual impression of distance between the sitter and the observer. The armrest of the chair functions as a dividing element between
Mona Lisa and the viewer.
The woman sits markedly upright with her arms folded, which is also a sign of her reserved posture. Only her gaze is fixed on the observer and seems to welcome him to this silent communication. Since the brightly lit face is practically framed with various much darker elements (hair, veil, shadows), the observer's attraction to
Mona Lisa's face is brought to even greater extent. Thus, the composition of the figure evokes an ambiguous effect: we're attracted to this mysterious woman but have to stay at a distance as if she were a divine creature. There is no indication of an intimate dialogue between the woman and the observer as is the case in the
Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (Louvre) painted by
Raphael about ten years after
Mona Lisa, and undoubtedly influenced by Leonardo's portrait.
The painting was among the first portraits to depict the sitter before an imaginary landscape. The enigmatic woman is portrayed seated in what appears to be an open
loggia with dark pillar bases on either side. Behind her a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains. Winding paths and a distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence. The sensuous curves of the woman's hair and clothing, created through
sfumato, are echoed in the undulating imaginary valleys and rivers behind her. The blurred outlines, graceful figure, dramatic contrasts of light and dark, and overall feeling of calm are characteristic of Leonardo's style. Due to the expressive synthesis that Leonardo achieved between sitter and landscape it's arguable whether
Mona Lisa should be considered as a traditional portrait, for it represents an ideal rather than a real woman. The sense of overall harmony achieved in the painting—especially apparent in the sitter's faint smile—reflects Leonardo's idea of a link connecting humanity and nature.
Mona Lisa has no visible facial hair—including eyebrows and eyelashes. Some researchers claim that it was common at this time for genteel women to pluck them off, since they were considered to be unsightly. For modern viewers the missing eyebrows add to the slightly semi-abstract quality of the face.
Conservation
The Mona Lisa has survived for more than 500 years, and an international commission convened in 1952 noted that "the picture is in a remarkable state of preservation." This is partly due to the result of a variety of conservation treatments the painting has undergone. A detailed analysis in 1933 by Madame de Gironde revealed that earlier restorers had "acted with a great deal of restraint." During 2006,
Mona Lisa underwent a major scientific observation that proved through infrared cameras she was originally wearing a bonnet and clenching her chair (something that Leonardo decided to change as an afterthought).
Display
On
April 6,
2005—following a period of curatorial maintenance, recording, and analysis—the painting was moved to a new location within the museum's Salle des États. It is displayed in a purpose-built, climate-controlled enclosure behind bullet proof glass. About 6 million people view the painting at the Louvre each year.
At the time, the painting was believed to be lost forever, and it would be two years before the real thief was discovered. Louvre employee
Vincenzo Peruggia stole it by entering the building during regular hours, hiding in a broom closet and walking out with it hidden under his coat after the museum had closed. On
December 30 of that same year, Ugo Ungaza Villegas, a young
Bolivian, damaged the painting by throwing a rock at it. This resulted in the loss of a speck of pigment near the left elbow, which was later painted over. The painting is now covered with bulletproof security glass.
Fame
Historian Donald Sassoon cataloged the growth of the painting's fame. During the mid-1800s,
Théophile Gautier and the
Romantic poets were able to write about
Mona Lisa as a
femme fatale because Lisa was an ordinary person.
Mona Lisa "...was an open text into which one could read what one wanted; probably because she wasn't a religious image; and, probably, because the literary gazers were mainly men who subjected her to an endless stream of male fantasies." During the 20th century, the painting was stolen, an object for mass reproduction, merchandising, lampooning and speculation, and was reproduced in "300 paintings and 2,000 advertisements". The subject was described as deaf, in mourning, toothless, a "highly-paid tart", various people's lover, a reflection of the artist's neuroses, and a victim of syphilis, infection, paralysis, palsy, cholesterol or a toothache.
Until the 20th century,
Mona Lisa was one among many and certainly not the "most famous painting" in the world as it's termed today. Among works in the Louvre, in 1852 its market value was 90,000 francs compared to works by Raphael valued at up to 600,000 francs. In 1878, the
Baedeker guide called it "the most celebrated work of Leonardo in the Louvre". Between 1851 and 1880, artists who visited the Louvre copied
Mona Lisa roughly half as many times as certain works by
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo,
Antonio da Correggio,
Paolo Veronese,
Titian,
Jean-Baptiste Greuze and
Pierre Paul Prud'hon.
Speculation about the painting
Although the sitter has traditionally been identified as
Lisa de Giocondo, a lack of definitive evidence has long fueled alternative theories, including the possibility that Leonardo used his own likeness. However, on
January 14,
2008, German academics of
Heidelberg University made public a finding that corroborates the traditional identification: dated notes scribbled into the margins of a book by its owner on October 1503 established Lisa de Giocondo as the model for the painting.
Other aspects of the painting that have been subject to speculation are the original size of the painting, whether there were other versions of it, and various explanations for how the effect of an enigmatic smile was achieved.
In a National Geographic presentation titled "Testing The Mona Lisa" it was deduced, after rigorous assessment, that the figure depicted in the painting might be maternal, or pregnant. It was found, after extensive infrared reflectography, that Lisa herself had a haze around her clothing indictative of a guarnello, the attire worn by pregnant women. Another theory proposed by various health professionals was that Leonardo's representation of her hands as slightly 'large' was further indicative of Lisa's pregnancy. Conversely, as many scholars or persons suggest, this representation is merely a stylistic concept of beauty exemplified by numerous Renaissance painters, including Leonardo himself.
Legacy
The
avant-garde art world has also taken note of the undeniable fact of the
Mona Lisa's popularity. Because of the painting's overwhelming stature,
Dadaists and
Surrealists often produce modifications and
caricatures. In 1919,
Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential Dadaists, made a
Mona Lisa parody by adorning a cheap reproduction with a moustache and a goatee, as well as adding the rude inscription L.H.O.O.Q., when read out loud in
French sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" (translating to "she has a hot ass" as a manner of implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability). This was intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo's alleged homosexuality. According to Rhonda R. Shearer, the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modelled on Duchamp's own face.
Salvador Dalí, famous for his pioneering surrealist work, painted
Self portrait as Mona Lisa in 1954.
In 1963
Andy Warhol created
serigraph prints of the
Mona Lisa, in an effort to reduce her gravity to that of a disposable modern icon; to a similar cultural stature of the modern celebrities
Marilyn Monroe or
Elvis Presley. A later reproduction of the
Mona Lisa was discovered painted onto a hillside near
Newport, Oregon on
August 15,
2006. It was created by artist Samuel Clemens using a tarp stencil and water-based paint.
The episodes of
The Simpsons have parodied the term "Mona Lisa"; "
Moaning Lisa", "
Moe'N'a Lisa", and "
Mona Leaves-a".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Mona Lisa'.
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