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Painting of the week: A Look at Da Vinci

16/05/2010

The painting of the week

Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci

Probably the most famous painting of all time, this mysterious face never ceases to fascinate. Historians agree that the artist commenced the painting in 1503. Leonardo worked on the painting for three to four years. The subject is believed to be a young Florentine woman, who was married to the wealthy merchant Francesco di Bartolommeo di Zanobi de Giocondo which is how she came to known by Italians as ‘La Gioconda’ ( translates as “ a light-hearted woman”).

Painting Technique

The hallmark smile in the portrait is not restricted to this painting, but can be seen in many of Leonardo’s paintings; in the face of St. Anne in the Burlington House cartoon. Many suggestions and theories have been made as to the reason behind the smile, ranging from a physical affliction in the sitter to the suggestion that Mona Lisa was really a man in disguise – even the face of Leonardo himself. The smile thus could be deduced as a smirk at the viewer not realising the joke. It is more likely that Leonardo was continuing to practice a technique known as Sfumato which he painstakingly perfected after possibly many alterations to the painting ( modern detection has revealed up to four re-workings of the head under the surface of the painting).

 The technique is a process of shading dark pigment into light to the point where the blending gives no delineation between the two being discernable. The result is the soft subtle smile, which if you cover the corner of the mouth with your finger will reveal a straight sour mouth. The smile is in the extremely subtle blending which causes the eye to interact between the light and shade in a way that we almost discern a movement in the expression – read as a smile, which is created by the upward blended shading at the corner of the mouth.  

For a full explanation of how the Sfumato technique was the key to the subtle effect of the Mona Lisa it would be useful to look up www.wikipedia.org.