Analysis of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa - Essay Example

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has bewitched generations of viewers with her cryptic smile. Believed to have been painted in 1508 the painting shows by some accounts the wife of a wealthy 16th century Florentine Merchant; others debate the identity of its subject and her motives for sitting. The constant debate over minutiae indicates how deeply the painting has struck a chord in all who see. it. There are many arguments as to the underlying appeal of the painting. It is important to review the underlying motivations for the painting's widespread appeal and emphasize how well the painting manages to subsume all explanations without ever being completely defined. This paper will reaffirm the great appeal of the Mona Lisa through some of the many aspects of painting appeal, that is the image it immediately creates, the fame surrounding its prodigious painter and interpretations of his underlying motivations for creating the painting and then suggesting how that appeal has become so widespread that it is has become, in business terminology, its own marketing phenomenon. The painting of the Mona Lisa immediately provokes a emotional response. The painting shows a young woman with her hands folded in front of her, seated in front of a muted bucolic background. The woman is dressed in the fashion of a woman of some standing in 16th Century Italian society. Even by todays more liberal standards there is a timeless elegance in her dress. The woman's face and area above her bodice are brought into 2 cleaner relief by a trick of light in which all other aspects are darkened so as to emphasize these areas. The face is serene and smooth and there is a great deal of wit in the eyes. The whisper of a smile speaks volumes and shows life from behind a two dimensional frame. The smile is so slight that it may not be seen as a smile by some- a fact that has been debated at length. The argument is academic since the intention to the observer is immediately apparent as a smile. As mentioned the setting is almost incidental. The beauty of the country side is darkened and blurred so as not to take away attention from the subject. There are so many factors here it is important to understand the man behind the work to clarify the understanding of the power of the work. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452- 1519) is considered today one of the towering giants of artistic and intellectual history. Throughout his life he built a body of work in art, science, anatomy, and architecture to name just a few of his wide ranging interests, that even today are preternaturally compelling. His anatomy drawings are even today considered a high standard in the field, a remarkable accomplishment at any time, but in Da Vinci's time, centuries before the scientific revolution, it is as if the only limits on his talents were his mortality. It is believed he started work on the Mona Lisa in 1503 and completed it 5 years later, according to the poet Vasari.( Barolsky 34). There is great complexity to this work as Stites indicates, “Leonardo's 3 anatomical studies, coupled with his knowledge of psychology and his mastery of the painter's craft, put at his disposal by his fiftieth year, when he probably painted this picture, ability possessed by no other artist with the exception of Velzquez and Rembrandt. (Stites 563) . Stites clearly illustrates how many elements Da Vinci managed to master with this single work. He also emphasizes that the work was intended to be seen in a joyful spirit rather than the image of mourning widow which it was misinterpreted because of the dark colors the subject was wearing. In truth the woman is wearing green dress with dark red sleeves.( Stites 563) The fame and the Mystique of the Mona Lisa were also aided by the lyrical testimony given by contemporary writer Giorgio Vasari. Vasari wrote a massive tome on the works of the many prominent artists of his time in the the middle of the 16th Century . While Da Vinci needed little introduction to anyone familiar with his genius Vasari did much to further add to our admiration of him and by extension his most famous work, the Mona Lisa. Barolsky is not modest in his praise of the work: "Vasari's monumental Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects is without question the single greatest book ever written about the history of art." (Barolsky 123) In this book Da Vinci is shown to be gentle and kind on top of all his other virtues. This perhaps reflects in the great praise that he pours on Mona Lisa in his biography. It is Vasari who suggests the real identity of the subject was the 4 wife of Francesco del Giocondo a prominent Florentine silk merchant, a theory which is widely agreed as the truth. It is also Vasari who adds elements to the story of the painting that other paintings do not enjoy today, a contemporary witness. For example, he suggests that during the painting there were professional clowns employed to keep the subject amused, a trivial detail perhaps but it appears to add life to the character and a sense of familiarity which has no doubt added to the power of the image. But the small aside that Vasari has mentioned was intended as more than a humorous anecdote but a way in which to explain the the smile of the Mona Lisa that strikes all viewers with its complexity. The technique that Da Vinci chose in Mona Lisa reflected many of his preoccupations and added further to the brilliance of the painting. As Clark describes the Mona Lisa's smile was no accident: “ the Mona Lisa's smile is the supreme example of that complex inner life, caught and fixed in durable material, which Leonardo in all his notes on the subject claims as one of the chief aims of art." (Clark 119) The work was then as Clark describes Da Vinci's drive to capture the living moment on canvas. He achieves this with the Mona Lisa with the use of the Sfumato or a kind of smoky effect that is almost impressionistic in its ability to capture the living motion in a two dimensional image. This effect is used to effect in the painting but the smile is painted with more exactness than the broader lines of impressionism and 5 it reflects the breadth of Da Vinci's knowledge of human anatomy. The Mona Lisa and the legend that surrounded Da Vinci were further accentuated by famous commentary in the future. Da Vinci's work and the legend surrounding him made widely known by Varasi's work did much to incite further interest in both him and his painting, the Mona Lisa. No less a figure than Sigmund Freud the father of Psychiatry waded into the debate with his Psychoanalytic analysis of both Da Vinci and his underlying motivation for creating the Mona Lisa. Freud according to Peter Gay researched Da Vinci's writings for some time before arriving at what he thought was the clue to Da Vinci's development in a rare reference to childhood by way of reference to the flight of birds. Freud thought the bird reference was intended as a reference to vulture, the vulture of Da Vinci's illegitimate birth, metaphorically speaking, and being raised by a mother alone. Freud suggested that the mother's love is what pervaded Da Vinci's thinking throughout his life. This was in keeping with the basis of Psychoanalysis which asserted that the problems and the motivations of adulthood were rooted in the events of childhood and played out in the themes of the Greek Classical myths. The motivations for the Mona Lisa were even more complicated according to Freud and incorporated another aspect of his early life. Freud reviewed the early life of Da Vinci as he was taken from his home to live with his father's new wife and over the course of his childhood he moved between his step mother and his real mother, both of whom were loving women. Gray describes the the effects that Freud 6 believed living with two mothers gave him: Thus, Leonardo grew up with two mothers. Shortly after 1500, when he came to paint Mona Lisa, her ambiguous, misty smile recalled to him with oppressive vividness the two loving, lovely young women who, together, had presided over his childhood. The creative spark that makes art by leaping between experience and memory gave the portrait of the enigmatic, enticing Mona Lisa its immortality. (Gay 272) There is a presumptuousness in Freud's ideas that strike the modern sensibility as suspect but this does not diminish the extent of Freud's deserved reputation and for him to have commented on length on Da Vinci indicates the curiosity that surrounded the man. The legend of the Mona Lisa would continue to grow in the future along with her creator as the painting became an icon in the modern age. The Mona Lisa today is perhaps the most well known classical painting in existence. It is seen in advertising campaigns and popular images everywhere; it has been used to sell all manner of products, "Corsets, deodorants, cigars, condoms - the Mona Lisa has been used to endorse them all." (Sassoon 40) Peter Sassoon argues convincingly that the iconic status of the Mona Lisa has had much to do with a series of events that resulted in essentially a hugely successful marketing scheme for the painting as this paper has in due course argued. He argues that the eventual residence of the painting in the Louvre in France presented the most high profile setting for her display. The painting was stolen in 1911 and then recovered in 1913; this added considerable cache to the work Sasson suggest by giving it a 7 huge profile. The painting also fulfilled many of advertisings requirement of product placement image as Sassoon has suggested: it has a the association of high culture and the image is benign with its sexually neutral depiction of a serene woman with a barely perceptible smile, and finally it is adaptable for a variety of mediums. But perhaps the greatest event in the widespread dissemination of the image came with the transport of the Louvre gallery to New York and Japan in the 60's and 70's respectively. Once this happened Sassoon suggests that the image of the Mona Lisa became ubiquitous. The Mona Lisa since 1980 has been found everywhere from "air travel (to Paris), rum, oranges, wigs, blood-testing kits, air-conditioning equipment, a dental prosthesis, the Renault Twingo, the cosmetic face mask Mudd, Marriott's Renaissance hotels, computer equipment and the intrauterine device Mona Lisa-CU375" (Sassoon 40) . In this widespread dissemination of the image the beauty of the original has been perhaps ignored and relegated to iconic status. This is unfortunate for the true connoisseurs of the work. There is such a widespread proliferation of the Mona Lisa now that it is now perhaps a corrupted experience to see: “Art historian E. H. Gombrich says the picture has become so worn out by all these references that it's almost impossible "to see it with fresh eyes." “ but as Gentleman argues the 8 truth may be that the crowds that come to see it may just the physical obstacles that viewers are somewhat jaded “ But the reality is that in the Louvre, you cannot really see the painting at all for the far more practical reason that there are too many other people in front of it. (Gentleman 102) The Mona Lisa is today justifiably perhaps the most famous painting in the world today. The modern accident of marketing cache that has befallen it does not in any way reduce its great stock as work of art. Sasson is correct to describe the recent history of its marketing success but he perhaps diminishes the power of the original work by singularly focusing on its marketing success. The painting was a remarkable achievement by an artist of rare genius. The painting like the artist deserve all the revery they have received over the ages. Works Cited Barolsky, Paul. "Giorgio Vasari: Art and History." The Art Bulletin 80.2 (1998): 380+. Questia. 11 Apr. 2006 . Barolsky, Paul. "Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects." The Art Bulletin 80.2 (1998): 380+. Questia. 11 Apr. 2006 . Clark, Kenneth. Leonardo Da Vinci: An Account of His Development as an Artist. New York: Macmillan, 1939. Questia. 11 Apr. 2006 . Easthope, Antony. The Unconscious. London: Routledge, 1999. Questia. 11 Apr. 2006 . Gay, Peter. Freud: A Life for Our Time. New York: Norton, 1998. Questia. 11 Apr. 2006 . Gentleman, Amelia. "How She Got Her Smile." The Wilson Quarterly Wntr 2005: 102. Questia. 11 Apr. 2006 . Sassoon, Donald. "Smile! You're on Canvas." New Statesman 24 Sept. 2001: 40. Questia. 11 Apr. 2006 . Stites, Raymond S. The Arts and Man. New York; London: Whittlesey House, McGraw-hill Book Company, Inc., 1940. Questia. 11 Apr. 2006 . Read More