The Mona Lisa and The Techniques That Immortalize It Kari Powell Dr. Carey Rote May 2, 2011 1
The Mona Lisa and
The Techniques That Immortalize It
Kari Powell
Dr. Carey Rote
May 2, 2011
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! Over the course of Mona Lisaʼs 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
Vinciʼs 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 flourished
and set off a specific 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 manʼs eyes” (Kleiner, 583), she gazes boldly yet serenely at the viewer,
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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 merchantʼs wife, but rather a Late Renaissance
woman with a smile that hints at sometimes flirting with liberating thoughts such as
feminism and a more modest, wistful approach. Da Vinciʼs 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 Lisaʼs all-knowing gaze and amused, changing smile, “which
seems both alluring and aloof” (Brewerʼs 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 amplified. 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 scientific studies on Mona Lisaʼs “hidden
faces” and how she can attain different expressions based on different light settings,
perspectives from peripheral or frontal vision, and Leonardo Da Vinciʼs immense
understanding of sfumato and chiaroscuro, the differing intensities of shadow painted in
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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 figures
seem stiff and almost mannequin-like, flat and two-dimensional. Many tried to solve this
issue, like Boticelli arranging his painted fabric and hair to flow and soften the harsh
lines of his figures. 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
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The Last Supper -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 oneʼs viewpoint, angle, and time of day.
! Different types of perspective were studied and developed by Filippo
Brunelleschi before Da Vinciʼs new method of shading, and consists of one and two
point perspective. One-point perspective is illustrated in Leonardo Da Vinciʼs 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
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Portrait of Young Woman With Unicorn -Raphael Sanzio
! Mona Lisa! -Leonardo Da Vinci
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 three-
dimensional 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 engulfing the vegetation
and waters as well a Raphaelʼs “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, Raphaelʼs 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 Catherineʼs wheel that was mistaken as a dog
before when the painting was being restored, still a positive sign meaning fidelity and
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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 figure and similar columns can be seen in Raphaelʼs
piece.
! The Mona Lisa is a piece most critics have called “unparalleled” and “magnificent
in every detail,” whose face can be recognized internationally. However, without
understanding Leonardoʼs 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.
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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.
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