Mona Lisa-The famous painting

Some people are disappointed when they first see the most famous painting in the world.

Maybe at first glance it doesn’t give you the wow factor that other paintings give when you see. But the truth is, when you see how many people are surrounded every time just to see the masterpiece is on different level.

But the fact what we see is quite a contemplative portrait. A portrait which is the greatest psychological portrait ever painted. A portrait so ahead of its time, that centuries later we are still trying to figure it out.

In 1517, the French king, King Francis I offered Leonardo a job, court painter and engineer and architect to the king. Leonardo now in his sixties moved to the chateau of Amboise in France and never went back to Italy. He brought with him dozens of sketch books, but one painting i.e., Mona Lisa. leonardo knew how important it was. He know it was a master piece

Mona Lisa is the end product of the greatest inquisitive mind in history. A self made man with a voracious appetite for knowledge, a man who dedicated himself to the study of anatomy, geology and philosophy

For Mona Lisa he used a thin grained piece of popular tree and applied an undercoat of lead white. he painted with glazes that had a very small amount of pigment mixed with the oil. So, how dark you want your glass to be, depends on how much pigment you use. He used more like a wash, which he applied thin, layer by layer.

As we move around the painting, that light shifts around. he used tiny, almost invisible brushstrokes applied super slowly over months, or in Mona Lisa case, it’s years.

By contrast, on her skin, brush strokes were applied in an irregular way and that makes the grain of the skin, look more life like. All of these techniques pioneered by Leonardo, bring the painting to life. He made sure, we would not be distracted from the face of Mona Lisa.

Leonardo uses the classic pyramid shaped composition that was introduced during the renaissance. It is an important change from the paintings of the 15th century. The structure provides stability but more importantly it provides a clear center of focus and directs your gaze.

In Mona Lisa’s case, it is pulling us into her face. The Mona Lisa is the earliest Italian portrait to focus on the sitter in a 3 quarter length pose, rather than full length. But why? because he completely fills the frame with his subject, making the painting more intimate and cutting down on distractions.

The another thing is, portraits were usually done with an open sky as the background, a monotone background or a simple room. Mona Lisa is in front of a complicated landscape that only existed in Leonardo’s imagination. Paintings that are drawn during that period had both the subject and the background in sharp focus. Whereas the background of Mona Lisa seems to fade or become more blurred and out of focus. This is Arial perspective and Leonardo invented it