Magzoid Magazine - Luxury Magazine in the Creative Space | November 2021

The Mysterious
Smile
of the Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa, also known
as La Gioconda, is the
wife of Francesco del
Giocondo. This figure
of a woman, dressed in
the Florentine fashion of her day and
seated in a visionary, mountainous
landscape, is a remarkable instance
of Leonardo da Vinci’s sfumato
technique of soft, heavily shaded
modeling. The original painting is
owned by the Government of France
and is on the wall in the Louvre in
Paris, France.
For Mona Lisa, Leonardo used a
thin-grained piece of popular tree
and applied an undercoat of lead
white. Leonardo painted with glazes
that had a very small amount of
pigment mixed with the oil. He used
tiny or almost invisible brushstrokes,
applied slowly over months, or in
Mona Lisa’s case, years. By contrast
on her skin, brush strokes were
applied irregularly which makes the
grain of the skin look more life-like.
The magic of the Mona Lisa’s
smile is that it seems to react to our
gaze. She smiles back mysteriously
and when we glance away, the
enigmatic smile lingers in our minds.
In no other painting are motion and
emotion, the paired touchstones of
Leonardo’s art, so intertwined.
Leonardo uses the traditional
pyramid-shaped composition
that provides stability but most
importantly a clear center of focus
that directs your gaze. In Mona
Lisa’s case, it is dragging us into
her face. Today if we see a Mona
Lisa photo it seems normal but back
then it was innovative. Previously,
subjects were strong and upright
aristocrats, but Mona Lisa was
relaxed, her hands resting gently
on the arm of her chair as she
turns towards us almost as if it’s
a snapshot. The painting seems
like we are directly looking into her
eyes and she is looking directly at
us. Women in paintings just didn’t
do that. They didn’t look boldly
and directly at the viewer. The
entire painting deviated from the
The magic of the
Mona Lisa’s smile is that
it seems to react to our
gaze. She smiles back
mysteriously and when
we glance away, the
enigmatic smile lingers
in our minds.
traditional way women were painted
in Italy.
When Leonardo was perfecting
Mona Lisa’s smile he became
fascinated by how a smile works
and analyzed every possible
movement of each part of the face.
Working out the origins of every
nerve that controls every facial
muscle, the fine lines at the end turn
down slowly, leading us to believe
the lips are smiling. This simple
anatomical drawing is the beginning
of the Mona Lisa’s smile. Leonardo
knows from the optic studies that
light rays do not come to a single
point in the eye but instead, hit the
world area of the retina and this is
the key to her enigmatic smile.
The delicately painted veil, the
finely wrought tresses, and the
careful rendering of folded fabric
demonstrate Leonardo’s studied
observations and inexhaustible
patience. 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.
-feature@magzoid.com
www.magzoid.com November 2021 31