Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?
The layered creative process behind the Mona Lisa
You’ve heard of Leonardo Da Vinci, the world-renowned artist who created the Mona Lisa that now sits in The Louvre, but how much did you actually know about him? Small facts like his experience in optics, physics, anatomy, and more could have shaped the art technique behind the Mona Lisa. Today, we’ll be focusing on Mona Lisa and the process behind its creation.
Do we know why it is so famous? Was it her eyes that traced your every movement? Was it her bewitching smile that enticed onlookers? Was it because it was stolen? Or maybe, it was a combination of all these factors. Some would argue that before the theft, Mona Lisa was a seemingly unsuspecting and fairly small painting that garnered no attention.
The Mona Lisa was actually not noticed to be missing for 24 hours. The burglar Peruggia was a handyman who simply removed the painting and hid it under his smock then waltzed out the door. This allowed the newspapers to make headlines on the theft of the Mona Lisa, poking fun at the inept government. Queues for the Louvre piled in like never before as people awaited curiously to just see the empty space where the painting had been hung.
While I do agree that such action thrust Mona Lisa into the limelight, there are many hidden layers as to why Mona Lisa is such a great work of art. let’s rewind back to Leonardo and his study in the anatomy of human body. He worked under Verocchio and became a master of what we call topographic anatomy’s specialising in the studies of muscles, tendons and other anatomical features.
With his access to dissections of the human corpses, Leonardo made detailed drawings of anatomy including the human skeleton, it’s organs and muscles. This deep understanding of the human body way beyond his time no doubt contributed to him being an artist able to depict humans realistically. Such masterful skills are displayed in his earlier work, Vitruvian Man, another one of his famous works.
However, though the Mona Lisa garners much buzz, online tourists who visit the Louvre are often met with disappointment. The expectations of a world-renowned work of art come breaking down staring at the small portrait that is barely visible among the sea of people. Understandably, people may not relish its mind-blowing techniques from such a distant, much less with the protective glass that reflects light. But a closer look at the Mona Lisa will allow us to understand the skill that came with such a painting.
Starting with her profile, the Mona Lisa was quite scandalous at the time. Portraits of women submissively glancing away were quite common, but rarely directly at the viewer. Mona Lisa’s clothes are opposed to those of flamboyant, dramatic draping of wealthy aristocrats of the time. While she herself was wealthy, it is suspected that Leonardo did so to avoid distracting from her face. Additionally, he employed the classic pyramid composition that provides a central focus and directs our gaze to her face.
The Mona Lisa is one of the first portraits with a close-up, half-body that cuts down on distractions and made it more intimate. Such methods would be popularised 400 years after he pioneered it. Her confident gaze and relaxed posture were a stark contrast from the normal side profile portraits that were stiff and uptight. Hence, creating a ground breaking portrait at the time.
Shifting our focus to the background horizon of the Mona Lisa, we notice that the horizon lines are different while her shoulders are painted levelled. However, we believe the horizon should be levelled so our eyes instinctively perceive the shoulders as slanted. It creates an illusion of movement, adding to the inner liveliness or rather, eeriness of the Mona Lisa moving within the frame.
Leonardo pioneered a technique called Sfumato (meaning ‘Smokey’ in Italian). It consists of blending the tones to avoid a distinct outline through blending the thin layers of glaze. This is shown in the haze around the jagged mountains, her smiles and her eyes which is why she appears so lifelike instead of jarring and 2 dimensional. He used glazes with small amounts of pigment that relied on thin layer-by-layer application.
It brings depth and luminosity through its reflection of light on the white canvas surface through it’s dark glaze, as if lighting from within a painting. As our eyes move around the painting, light also shifts around, changing the depths. Leonardo used tiny brush strokes applied over years (16 years is the likely amount suspected by scholars), layering it to create shadows that appeared lifelike.
This amazing method was no doubt extensively researched as Leonardo had a page in his journal dedicated to the study of human eyes.
The famous elusive smile of Mona Lisa that teases and draws you in. The Mona Lisa’s ever-changing smile fades and appears if we look at it twice. This magic is explained by the function of our eyes. When we look directly at her eyes, our central vision registers it clearly while our peripheral vision recognises shadows- which portrays her as grinning ear to ear.
When we focus directly on her smile, we only see she is slightly smiling. To achieve this, Leonardo worked out the origin of every nerve that controlled each movement. In his journal filled with sketches of anatomy we can see a smile that resembles the Mona Lisa, slightly turned down lines at the end, we still feel she is smiling.
In a world where art and science are often seen as mutually exclusive, Leonardo Da Vinci has brilliantly combined his extensive knowledge and skilfully birthed this painting — The Mona Lisa.
By Chloe Wong
