MYSTERIES OF THE PAINTING OF MONA LISA
MONA LISA
- The Mona Lisa or La Gioconda is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci that has been described as "the best know the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world".
- The Mona Lisa is also one of the most valuable painting in the world. It holds the Guinness World Record for the highest know insurance valuation in history at $100 million in 1962, which is worth nearly $820 million in 2018.
- The painting is thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and is in oil on white Lombardy poplar panel.
- It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517.
- Recent academic work suggests that it would not have been started before 1513. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on Permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1797.
THE MONA LISA AND ITS INFLUENCE
These signs of aging distract little from the painting's effect. In its exquisite synthesis of sitter and landscape, the Mona Lisa set the standard for all future portraits. The painting presents a woman in half-body portrait, which has a a backdrop a distant landscape. Yet this simple description of a seemingly standard composition given little sense of Leonardo's achievement. The sensuous curves of the sitter's hair and clothing, created through fumigator (use of fine shading), are echoed on the shapes of the valleys and rivers behind her. The sense of overall harmony achieved in the painting-especially apparent in the sitter's faint smile-reflects Leonardo's idea of the cosmic link connecting humanity and nature, making this painting an enduring record of Leonardo's vision.
SOME FACTS
- SMILE
- EYEBROWS
- ILLNESS
- HE OR SHE?
- LANDSCAPE
- LETTERS
