The picture, which the whole world knows as "Mona Lisa", or "La Gioconda", was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in 1507 and since then, the secrets associated with it haunt scientists, poets, artists and people who are simply in love with art. Every year about six million people visit the Louvre Museum in Paris to understand for themselves what is the attraction and secret of one of the most famous smiles.
Who is Mona Lisa
The mysterious smile is far from the only mystery of "Mona Lisa". For many years, art critics could not come to an opinion who exactly is depicted in the picture. There are still several of the most common versions. According to one of them, the woman in the painting is Lisa del Giocondo, the third wife of the wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. There are documents claiming that in 1503, the date when work on the painting began, Leonardo commissioned a portrait of Madame Giocondo.
Giocondo translated from Italian means "carefree".
Others believe that Da Vinci painted the wife of a silk merchant in another portrait that has not come down to us, and that the mysterious lady, whose portrait he painted for about 4 years, is Isabella of Aragon, wife of the artist's patron saint, the Duke of Milan.
Still others argue that the painting is not dated correctly. The time of its creation is 1512-1516 and the lady depicted on the canvas is the wife of Giuliano Medici, who ruled Milan during these years.
Mona in the title of the picture means madam or mistress. In Russian, the picture can be called "Mrs. Lisa".
Another version is that "Mona Lisa" is the artist himself in a female form. According to some digital analysis, the features of the great painter in one of the self-portraits exactly coincide with the appearance of his most famous model, and all this is a mystification of a genius.
The secret of her smile
Yes, a woman who has put such riddles in front of scientists has the right to a mysterious smile. However, art critics argue that there is no secret, and the whole point is only in the unique sfumato technique, the name of which is translated as smoky or disappearing. This is a unique combination of strokes, which the artists convey the feeling of air, softening the outline of shapes, tones and midtones. According to neuroscientists, our peripheral vision is only able to perceive large details, while our central vision is small. If you look at "La Gioconda" directly, focusing on the eyes of the model, leaving her lips to the peripheral vision, it seems that a smile slides over them, but if you look closely at the lips, that is, look at them and see with central vision, it disappears. The same effect explains the melting smile of Gioconda when moving away or moving in different directions from the picture.
But a simple scientific explanation does not fit romantics, who consider the way La Gioconda smiles unimportant, but much more mysterious why she smiles. It is known that on the first version of the painting, Mona Lisa did not even think about a smile, only later the artist made corrections to the canvas. A melting smile gave rise to the myth of the novel of a beautiful model and a great artist, carefully hidden from a jealous husband, who, according to all the laws of the genre, was much older than his charming wife. This legend does not stand up to criticism, because all possible models of the painter had husbands and lovers much younger than Leonardo, who at the time of writing the canvas was already over fifty.
What is Gioconda smiling at? Apparently, this is destined to remain a secret forever, without which great art is inconceivable.
