Some people say they feel watched by the Mona Lisa , no matter where they are standing. The background is also a textbook case.
The sfumato technique is used to create perspective that merges gently. It is undoubtedly the mystery of the Mona Lisa that has made it so famous. But is it actually Lisa who is depicted? It is reported that the person who commissioned the painting from Leonardo da Vinci was a nobleman living in Florence.
Twice widowed, Francesco del Giocondo married a young woman named Lisa in It is this story that gave the little painting, measuring 30 inches x 21 inches, its name. Another theory is that the young woman in the picture is no other than a mistress of Giuliano de' Medici, ruler of the Republic of Florence. They want to rebuild Leonardo's face, using CSI-style technology. Will he resemble the mysterious Mona Lisa? It is a painting but not a canvas. Da Vinci's famous masterpiece is painted on a poplar plank.
Considering he was accustomed to painting larger works on wet plaster, a wood plank does not seem that outlandish.
Canvas was available to artists since the 14th century, but many Renaissance masters preferred wood as a basis for their small artworks. She has her own room in the Louvre Museum in Paris. A glass ceiling lets in natural light, a shatter-proof glass display case maintains a controlled temperature of 43 degrees F. Jackie Kennedy invited her to visit. Over the centuries, French officials have only rarely let the painting out of their sight.
However, when first lady Jackie Kennedy asked if the painting could visit the U. A thief made her famous. Although in the art world, the painting had always been an acknowledged masterpiece, it wasn't until it was stolen in the summer of that it would capture the attention of the general public.
Newspapers spread the story of the crime worldwide. When the painting finally returned to the Louvre two years later, practically the whole world was cheering. Picasso was under suspicion for the theft. During the investigation, the gendarmes went so far as to question known art dissidents such as Pablo Picasso about the theft. They briefly arrested poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had once said the painting should be burned. Their suspicions proved to be unfounded. She receives fan mail.
Since the painting first arrived at the Louvre in , "Mona Lisa" has received plenty of love letters and flowers from admirers. She even has her own mailbox. Not everyone is a fan. When we look at it peripherally, glimpsing it with the corner of our eye, it is a bit blurrier, as if it were farther away. Check out the full table of contents and find your next story to read. With this knowledge, Leonardo was able to create an interactive smile, one that is elusive if we are too intent on seeing it.
If you stare directly at the mouth, the retina catches these tiny details and delineations, making her appear not to be smiling. But if you move your gaze slightly away, to look at her eyes or cheeks or some other part of the painting, you will catch sight of her mouth only peripherally. It will be a bit blurrier. These shadows and the soft sfumato at the edge of her mouth make her lips seem to turn upward into a subtle smile. The result is a smile that twinkles brighter the less you search for it.
Scientists recently found a technical way to describe all of this. They always have a sfumato quality, a veil of mystery. Leonardo once wrote and performed at the court of Milan a discourse on why painting should be considered the most exalted of all the art forms, more worthy than poetry or sculpture or even the writing of history.
One of his arguments was that painters did more than simply depict reality—they also augmented it. They combined observation with imagination.
Using tricks and illusions, painters could enhance reality with cobbled-together creations, such as dragons, monsters, angels with wondrous wings, and landscapes more magical than any that ever existed.
Leonardo believed in basing knowledge on experience, but he also indulged his love of fantasy. He relished the wonders that could be seen by the eye but also those seen only by the imagination. As a result, his mind could dance magically, and sometimes frenetically, back and forth across the smudgy line that separates reality from fantasia. Stand before the Mona Lisa , and the science and the magic and the art all blur together into an augmented reality. While Leonardo worked on it, for most of the last 16 years of his life, it became more than a portrait of an individual.
The Mona Lisa became the most famous painting in the world not just because of hype and happenstance, but because viewers were able to feel an emotional engagement with her. It is a brilliant depiction of reality—an alluring and emotionally mysterious woman sitting alone on a loggia—that is augmented radiantly by science and magical illusions.
She provokes a complex series of psychological reactions, ones that she in turn seems to exhibit as well. Most miraculously, she seems aware—conscious—both of us and of herself. That is what makes her seem alive, more alive than any other portrait ever painted. And what about all the scholars and critics over the years who despaired that Leonardo squandered too much time immersed in his studies of optics, anatomy, technology, and the patterns of the cosmos?
The Mona Lisa answers them with a smile. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest.
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