HOW TO ENJOY THE MONA LISA ( The Mona Lisa was not painted to represent beauty)
The Mona Lisa is perhaps the most popular piece of art in the world, the most visited, the most studied, and in this sense, perhaps the most elusive. She denies almost everyone the satisfaction of seeing her, and instead we leave dissatisfied after only a few moments in her presence. It does not help that those who visit her stand in long lines, then just get to see her just from a certain distance, not up close and personal. The waiting heightens up the expectations, but reality tells the viewer that Mona Lisa failed his/her expectations.
How then should one intending to see the Mona Lisa prepare for the impending meeting? Can the expectation be equaled by experience?
There are a few things one needs to prepare and perhaps bring to the experience to make it worthwhile.
A little bit of history of art.
Much of the complaint about the Mona Lisa is the color palette, which appears to be a bit dark for the modern taste. Colors of the past were made from natural pigments and were limited in their range, unlike today when synthetic colors have a very wide range. Painters of the time made their own pigments and experimented on how to make them last on the canvas. The darker tempos of the medieval age were now made brighter by blues like azurite, ultramarine and indigo; greens like verdigris, green earth and malachite; the yellows like Naples yellow, orpiment, and lead-tin yellow. Renaissance browns were obtained from umber. Whites were from lead, gypsum and lime white; and black from carbon black and bone black. Red chalks, with their rich, warm hue, were very popular from about 1500 to 1900. Eggs as a medium had just been replaced by oils and their natural luminosity and plasticity enabled Renaissance artists like da Vinci to achieve wholly new effects of color and realism, and significantly enhanced the power of their color palettes. Also, significant is that Leonardo painted in the technique that he created that made use of the soft blending of colors instead of defining subjects with hard lines. This was called the sfumato technique.
The depiction of High Renaissance subjects was mostly geared towards formality, and for the first time featured the affluent and their whims. Art was no longer just about religion. Although portrait painting was already practiced previously, this “perhaps” was the first time that a portrait of a private individual was painted for the sake of itself.
A little bit of Leonardo
Leonardo was both an artist and a scientist. Thus, he was not only bothered by creating an artistic representation, but that also of correct spatial depth and positioning. The period right before the renaissance, the late Gothic period, had already begun to understand how to depict space on canvas, or on a two-dimensional space, but had to look and feel like it was a three-dimensional space. The Mona Lisa’s background is a ragged landscape with a valley, hills, river and a bridge converging into a hazy distance. This is the first time correct perspective was used in a painting, signaling a real understanding of how to depict space in paintings. This understanding is the crucial moment which paved the way for Realism, which was the floodgate which unleashed the modern era in painting. Although the Mona Lisa is depicted frontally, the background shows landscape elements from three different angles, recognizable by the three different horizon lines. The impossibility of this concept suggests that the background landscape is more the product of Leonardo's imagination and that the depiction of a real landscape is impossible. However, it is possible that certain elements, such as the stone bridge on the right-hand edge of the picture, were real models. Check out Kelvin Busher for a very scientific and mathematical discussion of how Leonardo intently composed the Mona Lisa
Getting to know Lisa Giaconda
Leonardo never identified the commission of the painting thus the mystery of who she truly is. Despite extensive research on her, little is known about her even today. Scholars and historians have suggested that she is Lisa del Giocondo (née Gherardini), the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo, hence the alternative title to the work, La Gioconda. He is said to have commissioned the painting. The mystery of her identity seemed to have lent the portrait a character that, coupled with her enigmatic smile, direct gaze and iconic pose, have rendered her beautiful and pragmatic at the same time. This painting took several years ( 1503-1516) to be finished and Leonardo brought it with him from Florence to France where he was commissioned by the French King Francis I
A bit of actual history and time context
The Italian Renaissance, which reached its height at the end of the 15th century and the early decades of the 16th century, was a period of enlightenment not only in the arts but in almost all aspects of human life. This was brought about by compound results of man’s inquisitiveness and dialogues about god, man, and life. This is the reason why Leonardo was very interested in human anatomy, or why Michelangelo sought dialogues with God. Other great minds from this time are Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Copernicus, Titian.
Scholars agree that the general time for the high renaissance is about 1490s and that Leonardo's The Last Supper, the painting which he began in 1495 and concluded in 1498, makes a complete break with the Early Renaissance and created the world in which Michelangelo and Raphael worked, and ended in 1520 with the death of Raphael. Others say it ended with the Sack of Rome in 1527, when several artists were killed and many others dispersed from Rome. 1520 to 1530 was a transition period between the High Renaissance and Mannerism and politically marked as the end of the Republic of Florence and the beginning of the Duchy of Florence in 1532.
Lots of openness to the reality of the Mona Lisa
Expecting to see a luminous Mona Lisa which will instantly brighten up your day after standing in a long line before finally seeing it is the key to a failed experience. Great works of art do not answer questions, rather they invoke questions, and start an inner dialogue or a social dialogue that affects the individual, or society in a provocative way. Leonardo did not paint her because of her beauty, nor was it as a representation of beauty itself. Leonardo accepted the commission and then proceeded to conduct his experiments on spatial depth and color rendering. What makes it very different from Leonardo’s use of the one-point perspective in the Last Supper is that the painting technique used to define space is much more pronounced as compared to his sfumato on the Mona Lisa. He applied his paint in very thin layers over a very long period to achieve the glow on the face. For Leonardo, this was an experimental painting. The reason it probably took so long to finish it, was that he could still perfect his techniques while he continued to inquire about human anatomy.
Romance for art
A deep love for the arts is a crucial element to appreciation. I once approached a curated, darkened hall with a John Singer Sargent painting as its main exhibit. Recognizing it right away as a work by a great artist, although I did not recognize who yet, my heartbeat quickened, and I hastened to the painting without minding the others in the hall. I stood in front of it, awed as if hit by a massive hammer in the chest. I have fallen in love. In the same way, I have once held in awe, as I sat across them on a bench, in one of the hallways of the National Museum of Fine Arts of the Philippines, a set of wooden door handles sculpted by the great Napoleon Abueva. They were beautiful in their simplicity, but only the “learned” will appreciate it. Or the very enthusiastic Abueva fan. Otherwise, we would just dismiss it as a unique door handle.
All of these requirements to understand the Mona Lisa are what we call in art CONTEXT. What it basically means is that we cannot just dismiss works of art as good or bad without looking at how and when they were made, and who made it. Whereas this process employed by the neophyte art viewer is totally acceptable so that one can leave a work of art based on visual perception and the resulting feeling about it, for those needing a more satisfying experience, it must also come from a more insightful perspective. Context is crucial to this appreciation. That is the reason why another term in art has also been made important. Provenance. It means that where the work of art has been, who made it, and who owned it adds value to the work of art. This is what will make a house investor buy a house once owned by Marilyn Monroe for 100 million dollars but would not buy it for a million if somebody unknown owned it previously. Provenance is what makes a Frank Stella painting owned by Leonardo DiCaprio triple in price if he sold his 1973 Stella. Context is the key to an enjoyable meeting with La Gioconda.
KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER
The Mona Lisa is among the first personal portraits commissioned, signaling a tradition for the same which came to its height at the end of the classical period in art, and at the beginning of the modern period, The formal, three-quarter pose became the standard pose for portraits even to this day. The younger master, Raphael, copied this in one of his paintings, and the painting technique in almost all his paintings. Needless to say, Raphael became the icon to which other portrait artists, even today, refer to.
We see the beginning of the use of perspective to depict realistic space on a two-dimensional surface.
The painting was not painted to present or represent beauty itself, but as a culmination of many of the learnings Leonardo learned in his experiments with human anatomy, the effect of light on colors and thus blending them subtly instead of using sharp lines to define an edge of a subject.
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. In its exquisite synthesis of sitter and landscape, the Mona Lisa set the standard for all future portraits.
The sfumato technique was the first understanding of how light actually affects colors and how the human eye perceives that effect, the very reason for the birth of the modern techniques in art.
New pigments available in the 16th century were not as luminous as synthetic colors of today. The oil binders held the pigments for centuries but also darkened the paintings.
Context is crucial for a more insightful appreciation, else, the layman’s perspective is also acceptable.