"Leonardo da Vinci" by Bernd Luck
In the previous section, we told the story of Leonardo da Vinci, who moved to Milan at the age of 30 and devoted himself to the study of art and science in a relaxed atmosphere, and created masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper.
So, in this section, let's take a closer look at Leonardo da Vinci's most enigmatic painting, the Mona Lisa.
The mysterious Mona Lisa
Speaking of the painting "Mona Lisa", I believe everyone is familiar with it. The painting is considered one of the most recognizable paintings in the world and is a classic by Leonardo da Vinci.
When people think of this painting, the word "mysterious" always comes to mind, because when you look into the mouth of the Mona Lisa, her smile is faint, but when you look into her eyes, her smile starts to grow thick again.
So, why is the Mona Lisa smiling but not smiling, why is it a static painting, but it shows a sense of movement, what is so good about this painting, what is mysterious, and why has it become the most familiar painting in the world?
Next, let's reveal the secrets one by one.
The Mona Lisa is a portrait of a young woman. Who is this woman? Let's start with the name of the painting.
"Mona" means Madame in Italian, and "Lisa" is a personal name, so the original meaning of the painting "Mona Lisa" is the meaning of Madame Lisa. Later generations verified that the woman in the painting was named Lisa Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy merchant.
At that time, there was no technology such as cameras, and the only way people could retain their voices and smiles was to ask a painter to paint a portrait. Although this is expensive, it is still not a problem for nobles or merchants. Lisa's husband was a wealthy merchant who was in the business of silk, sugar cane, sheepskin, soap, and banking. With such a family background, it is not surprising that da Vinci was invited to paint.
Originally, this painting was customized for the wife of a wealthy businessman, but Da Vinci painted it, and he had a different emotion for this painting. He painted for sixteen years. For sixteen years, he traveled around with this painting until the last moment of his life. If at the beginning he painted for a commissioner, in the end, da Vinci painted for his own artistic pursuit, and he poured all his life's learning and thinking into this painting, making it a perfect combination of science and art in human history.
Next, let's take a closer look at this painting.
Blending brings it to life
The drawing board for the Mona Lisa is a thin poplar board with a texture. Leonardo da Vinci applied a layer of lead white to the wood as a primer, so that the glaze on the primer could reflect the light back, giving the painting more depth and illuminating the Mona Lisa from the inside out.
Next, he applied layer after layer of thin glaze to the canvas with meticulous brushstrokes, constantly refining and retouching the painting. According to modern X-ray analysis, the Mona Lisa's face has as many as 30 layers of glaze, each layer less than two microns thick.
The process of oil painting is very complicated, and the painter must wait until the next layer is dried before he can create the next layer. And this painting alone has 30 layers of faces, so it is no wonder that the face of the Mona Lisa is so lifelike, and it is no wonder that da Vinci painted it for 16 years. And this method is the "blending method" that da Vinci practiced all his life.
The word "smudge" comes from the Italian word for "smoke", which originally meant that the smoke diffused and dissipated in the air. Leonardo da Vinci believed: "The shadows and light you paint should be like smoke dissipating in the air, without contours and boundaries." ”
Therefore, in Da Vinci's pen, it is rare to see stiff and sharp lines. He seldom sketched the contours of the object directly with clear lines, as painters of the time did, but rather used very hazy lines, adding layers of color, so that when our gaze moved in the picture, the reflected light also moved.
Through this contrast of light and shadow, the object naturally emerges from the background and becomes more vivid. For example, if we look closely at the Mona Lisa's skin, we will find that all of da Vinci's brushstrokes are irregular, and the texture of the skin becomes life-like under the action of light, with texture and texture, and it becomes more flexible and vivid. This method of painting had a great influence on later Western painting, and da Vinci established his place in the history of art.
It is for this reason that the painting attracted attention as soon as it appeared, and was vividly described by Giorgio Vasari, the first art historian in the West, in his biography in 1550.
He wrote: "One look at this painting and one can understand how realistically art imitates nature...... The watery, sparkling eyes, the pink and pearly hues around the eyes, and the eyelashes, would not have been possible without a delicate brush...... The nose is rosy and soft, the nostrils are beautiful and lifelike, the lips are slightly open, the blush at the corners of the mouth blends with the skin tone on the face, and the pulse is almost visible in the hollow of the throat if you look closely. ”
Through his description, we can imagine how gorgeous and exquisite this painting was at the beginning. It's a pity that after 500 years of baptism, the painting has been damaged a lot, and the aging of the varnish has caused the whole picture to become more and more yellow and darker, and it is no longer the original luster. In addition, Lisa's eyebrows were also wiped off, making the beautiful Mona Lisa a somewhat weird "bald eyebrow". However, these small injuries still cannot hide the greatness of this painting.
Composition of the Mona Lisa
After talking about the "blending method", let's talk about the structure of the "Mona Lisa", "Mona Lisa" uses a large bust to compose the picture, which can better show the face of the character, making the character's performance more agile and more relatable.
However, until then, Italian portraits were full-length portraits, while Leonardo da Vinci did not conform to conventions, adopted new forms of expression, and achieved striking results. Since then, this large bust has not only become the mainstream of portraiture in the future.
In addition, the Mona Lisa's clothes are very simple, there is no jewelry on her body, and her hairstyle hangs down naturally, so there is nothing special about it at all. This was also a deliberate design by Leonardo da Vinci, who wanted to make sure that the eyes stayed on the Mona Lisa's face, or rather on the characters themselves.
Mystical smile
Speaking of the Mona Lisa's face, we have to talk about that mysterious smile.
As a portrait, the Mona Lisa is special because of the following three main problems:
First, why does her smile look like a smile?
Second, why does she seem to be moving?
Third, why look at her from any angle, her eyes are on you?
Let's start with the first question: Why does her smile look like a smile?
I believe that friends who have seen this painting will feel this way, when you first look into her eyes, you will feel that she is smiling at you, but in an instant, this smile seems to disappear again. Why is that?
For hundreds of years, many people have studied and discussed this, but they have never understood it. Until modern times, Professor Margaret Livingstone, a visual biologist at Harvard University, solved the mystery for us through her research.
Professor Margaret discovered through the study of optic nerves that humans have two different visual mechanisms: light vision and scolicus. When we focus, we use photopic vision, which helps us to spot a lot of details, but we also ignore shadows. Scolic, on the other hand, is responsible for identifying shadows around things, but at this time, our vision is not so accurate in its control of accuracy.
Leonardo da Vinci must have understood this optical principle very early, so he drew shadows around the corners of the Mona Lisa's mouth, so that when we look at the Mona Lisa's eyes with photopic vision, the scotic function will sweep into the shadow of the mouth, giving us the impression that the corners of the Mona Lisa's mouth are slightly upturned, as if she is smiling. But when we moved our gaze to the Mona Lisa's mouth, photopic vision took over, capturing the details of the mouth and ignoring the shadows that produce a smile. In this way, we will feel that the smile we just had is gone.
You see, da Vinci used science to "deceive" our eyes, making our perspective jump constantly in the eyes and corners of the mouth of the Mona Lisa, resulting in subtle changes between smiling and not smiling, which is why the Mona Lisa smiles mysteriously. So, the end of the mystery is science.
Okay, so let's move on to the second question, why does the Mona Lisa seem to be moving?
Here, in fact, da Vinci used a cunning optical trick to make our brains mistakenly think that the Mona Lisa was moving.
If we look closely, we will find that the background behind the Mona Lisa is not on the same line, but uneven. As a result, our brains are uncomfortable, and in the face of conflicting visual information, our brains will constantly jump between two images in an attempt to find the correct answer in its mind.
In this painting, because the horizon is high and low on both sides, the brain directs our eyes to jump back and forth between the left and right of the Mona Lisa, so the perspective we look at this painting becomes a dynamic perspective, and the result is that we seem to see the Mona Lisa moving, the corners of her mouth smiling, her eyes looking at us, and all this is happening completely unconsciously. And this is one of the reasons why the painting "Mona Lisa" makes people feel very mysterious.
Now, let's move on to the third question, which is that you will feel that no matter where you stand in the painting, the Mona Lisa's eyes are always on you. This phenomenon is also known as the "Mona Lisa effect".
So, what's going on? The answer comes down to science. Studies have shown that this effect occurs when the gaze angle of the person in the painting is less than 5 degrees.
Therefore, the Mona Lisa is not so mysterious, and its so-called unsolved mysteries are actually the mechanism of science. That's why it's called "the perfect combination of science and art in human history."
The "Mona Lisa" that became famous
However, the reason why the Mona Lisa has become the most famous painting in the world is not only the special skill of Leonardo da Vinci himself, but also the help of a theft.
In 1790, the Mona Lisa entered the Louvre, and in August 1911, the painting was suddenly stolen, and no one knows how it was stolen or where it went. At that time, the novel "Sherlock Holmes" was popular all over the world, so everyone turned into "Sherlock Holmes" and began to pay attention to the clues of this famous painting, coupled with the attention of the media around the world, the popularity of "Mona Lisa" naturally increased.
It wasn't until 1913 that the Mona Lisa reappeared. It turned out that a painter at the Louvre had stolen the painting, but it was discovered in the process of being sold, and the Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre in France.
Since then, the Mona Lisa has taken the world by storm, with everyone vying to see it, as well as modern artists. The Mona Lisa became the jewel of the Louvre. However, once the "famous" "Mona Lisa" was stolen, and since then it has been "assassinated" many times, either sprayed with paint or thrown with cream, and people use this way to attract the attention of the public in order to achieve a certain purpose.
Eventually, the Louvre chose to protect it with a glass cover. And because it attracted so much attention, the Louvre did not dare to restore the paintings. However, even if it turns yellow and dark, it is still the most beautiful image in people's hearts and cannot be easily changed.