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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