Mona Lisa and her 'Twin sister'
Mona Lisa, the lady with the enigmatic smile is one of the world's best-known faces and has countless copies and reproductions across the planet. The ever enchanting Mona Lisa’s twin sister was discovered last month in Madrid's Prado Museum.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is housed in Louvre museum in Paris, France
The painting "Portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo aka Mona Lisa aka La Joconde" which is a copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's famous "Mona Lisa" painting is at the Prado museum in Madrid, Spain for the last five centuries.
Experts thought the Prado museum piece to be just a close copy of the original. Recent reflectographic studies revealed enough evidences to believe that the Prado Mona Lisa was painted along with da Vinci’s original, in the same studio, by one of his favorite pupils—perhaps by Francesco Melzi or Andrea Salai who inherited the original Mona Lisa upon da Vinci’s death.
The replica mirrors the underdrawings on da Vinci’s panel, gives greater details that are obscured in the original, and is painted on walnut wood as was the wont of Florentine painters of the Renaissance. Until the recent examinations, it was believed to be on oak wood which was never used by Renaissance Florentines, and hence considered to be a studio copy created by some Dutch artist.
Lisa Gherardini, a Florentine merchant’s wife, is presumed to be the inspiration and model for the Mona Lisa. She appears younger and more seductive in the Prado copy—very much like a young Italian woman in her early twenties. The original painting is said to have lost its original colour, perhaps due to the infinitely thin layers that da Vinci applied over a period of many years. This wearing makes the woman appear older than she was, says art experts and curators.
The Prado Mona Lisa has travelled to Louvre, and now stays side by side with the original.
A copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's famous "Mona Lisa" painting is photographed after it was put on display at Madrid's El Prado Museum February 21, 2012. The museum presented their findings and details of the restoration of the painting, which was completed by one of Da Vinci's pupils at the same time as the original and in the same workshop, according to an El Prado Museum official.
Detail of Lisa's hands, her right hand resting on her left. Leonardo chose this gesture rather than a wedding ring to depict Lisa as a virtuous woman and faithful wife.
How Does She Smile?
The enigmatic smile of the woman in the painting has been the source of inspiration for many and a cause for desperation in others. In 1852, Luc Maspero, a French artist, jumped four floors to his death from a hotel room in Paris. His suicide note explained that he preferred death after years of struggling to understand the mystery behind the woman's smile.
When discussing the mystery behind the smile, art experts often refer to a painting technique called sfumato, which was developed by Da Vinci. In Italian, sfumato means "vanished" or "smoky," implying that the portrait is ambiguous and blurry, leaving its interpretation to the viewer's imagination. This technique uses a subtle blend of tones and colors to produce the illusion of form, depth and volume.
The human eye consists of two regions: the fovea, or central area, and the surrounding peripheral area. The fovea recognizes details and colors and reads fine print, and the peripheral area identifies motion, shadows and black and white. When a person looks at the painting, the fovea focuses on her eyes, leaving the peripheral area on her mouth. Peripheral vision is less accurate and does not pick up details, so the shadows in her cheekbones augment the curvature of her smile.
When the viewer looks directly at the woman's mouth, however, the fovea does not pick up the shadows, and the portrait no longer appears to be smiling. Therefore, the appearance and disappearance of her smile really is an attribute of viewers' vision. This is one of the reasons why the painting has remained an enigma to art enthusiasts and perhaps the most famous painting in the world.
The secret behind Mona Lisa's smile
The secret of how Leonardo da Vinci produced the optical effects that created the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile can be revealed for the first time.Scientists have discovered how the artist managed to achieve his trademark smoky effect, known as sfumato, on the painting; by applying up to 40 layers of extremely thin glaze thought to have been smeared on with his fingers.The glaze, mixed with subtly different pigments, creates the slight blurring and shadows around the mouth that give the Mona Lisa her barely noticeable smile that seems to disappear when looked at directly.Using X-rays to study the painting, the researchers were able to see how the layers of glaze and paint had been built up to varying levels on different areas of the face.With the drying times for the glaze taking months, such effects would have taken years to achieve.The scientists also suspect that he used his fingers to apply the glaze to his paintings as there are no brush marks or contours visible on the paintings
Leonardo da Vinci is known to have employed the sfumato effect to seamlessly blend shading together and to blur outlines. But the exact techniques used to achieve this have long fascinated and intrigued art experts.
Noisy secret of Mona Lisa's smile
For centuries, artists, historians and tourists have been fascinated by Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile. Now it seems that the power of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece comes in part from an unlikely source: random noise in our visual systems.
Christopher Tyler and Leonid Kontsevich at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco manipulated a digital image of the painting by introducing random visual noise - the equivalent of the snow seen on a badly tuned TV set - and asked 12 observers how they rated the resulting expression on a four-point scale from sad to happy.As would be expected, noise that lifted the edges of her mouth made Mona Lisa seem happier, and those that flattened her lips made her seem sadder. More surprising though, was how readily the visual noise changed people's perception of the Mona Lisa's expression.
Tyler says our visual system contains many sources of noise: fluctuations in the number of photons hitting light-receiving cells in the eye, spontaneous false activation of photon absorbing pigments, and randomness in the firing of neurons that carry the visual signals to the brain.
Tyler thinks this natural noise makes people observing the picture believe its expression is subtly changing, rather than thinking they are seeing a single ambiguous expression.
"That may be part of what makes the painting so powerful," he says, something Leonardo must have instinctively realised.
In addition to the enigma of Mona Lisa’s smile, there is still, for example, the enigma of how her eyes seem to follow the viewer and the dynamics of the background. Most importantly, there is the profusion of cultural questions regarding the style of the time period, the identity of Mona Lisa, and Mona Lisa’s relationship to Da Vinci . These questions are important aspects of art that neuroaesthetics could never encompass to address.
Mona Lisa painting 'contains hidden code'
The latest news about Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece comes from the Italian researcher Silvano Vicenti, who works for the Italian Heritage. He believes he has identified some letters in the eyes of Mona Lisa thanks to high resolution images. It seems Da Vinci’s initials appear in Mona Lisa’s right eye, whereas the letters B and S or CE in the left eye could be a clue to identify the model of the portrait. Leonardo Da Vinci was keen on symbols and codes to get messages across, therefore these letters could be the real model’s initials. There are a number of candidates for the model of the portrait, Lisa Del Giocondo, wife of a wealthy Italian merchant, being the most famous one. Some suggested Leonardo’s wife and Leonardo himself could be the model
Eyebrow or no eyebrow?
Revelations included:
Mona Lisa, the lady with the enigmatic smile is one of the world's best-known faces and has countless copies and reproductions across the planet. The ever enchanting Mona Lisa’s twin sister was discovered last month in Madrid's Prado Museum.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is housed in Louvre museum in Paris, France
The painting "Portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo aka Mona Lisa aka La Joconde" which is a copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's famous "Mona Lisa" painting is at the Prado museum in Madrid, Spain for the last five centuries.
Experts thought the Prado museum piece to be just a close copy of the original. Recent reflectographic studies revealed enough evidences to believe that the Prado Mona Lisa was painted along with da Vinci’s original, in the same studio, by one of his favorite pupils—perhaps by Francesco Melzi or Andrea Salai who inherited the original Mona Lisa upon da Vinci’s death.
The replica mirrors the underdrawings on da Vinci’s panel, gives greater details that are obscured in the original, and is painted on walnut wood as was the wont of Florentine painters of the Renaissance. Until the recent examinations, it was believed to be on oak wood which was never used by Renaissance Florentines, and hence considered to be a studio copy created by some Dutch artist.
Lisa Gherardini, a Florentine merchant’s wife, is presumed to be the inspiration and model for the Mona Lisa. She appears younger and more seductive in the Prado copy—very much like a young Italian woman in her early twenties. The original painting is said to have lost its original colour, perhaps due to the infinitely thin layers that da Vinci applied over a period of many years. This wearing makes the woman appear older than she was, says art experts and curators.
The Prado Mona Lisa has travelled to Louvre, and now stays side by side with the original.
A copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's famous "Mona Lisa" painting is photographed after it was put on display at Madrid's El Prado Museum February 21, 2012. The museum presented their findings and details of the restoration of the painting, which was completed by one of Da Vinci's pupils at the same time as the original and in the same workshop, according to an El Prado Museum official.
Detail of Lisa's hands, her right hand resting on her left. Leonardo chose this gesture rather than a wedding ring to depict Lisa as a virtuous woman and faithful wife.
How Does She Smile?
The enigmatic smile of the woman in the painting has been the source of inspiration for many and a cause for desperation in others. In 1852, Luc Maspero, a French artist, jumped four floors to his death from a hotel room in Paris. His suicide note explained that he preferred death after years of struggling to understand the mystery behind the woman's smile.
When discussing the mystery behind the smile, art experts often refer to a painting technique called sfumato, which was developed by Da Vinci. In Italian, sfumato means "vanished" or "smoky," implying that the portrait is ambiguous and blurry, leaving its interpretation to the viewer's imagination. This technique uses a subtle blend of tones and colors to produce the illusion of form, depth and volume.
The human eye consists of two regions: the fovea, or central area, and the surrounding peripheral area. The fovea recognizes details and colors and reads fine print, and the peripheral area identifies motion, shadows and black and white. When a person looks at the painting, the fovea focuses on her eyes, leaving the peripheral area on her mouth. Peripheral vision is less accurate and does not pick up details, so the shadows in her cheekbones augment the curvature of her smile.
When the viewer looks directly at the woman's mouth, however, the fovea does not pick up the shadows, and the portrait no longer appears to be smiling. Therefore, the appearance and disappearance of her smile really is an attribute of viewers' vision. This is one of the reasons why the painting has remained an enigma to art enthusiasts and perhaps the most famous painting in the world.
The secret behind Mona Lisa's smile
The secret of how Leonardo da Vinci produced the optical effects that created the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile can be revealed for the first time.Scientists have discovered how the artist managed to achieve his trademark smoky effect, known as sfumato, on the painting; by applying up to 40 layers of extremely thin glaze thought to have been smeared on with his fingers.The glaze, mixed with subtly different pigments, creates the slight blurring and shadows around the mouth that give the Mona Lisa her barely noticeable smile that seems to disappear when looked at directly.Using X-rays to study the painting, the researchers were able to see how the layers of glaze and paint had been built up to varying levels on different areas of the face.With the drying times for the glaze taking months, such effects would have taken years to achieve.The scientists also suspect that he used his fingers to apply the glaze to his paintings as there are no brush marks or contours visible on the paintings
Leonardo da Vinci is known to have employed the sfumato effect to seamlessly blend shading together and to blur outlines. But the exact techniques used to achieve this have long fascinated and intrigued art experts.
"The gradation of tones or colours from light to dark is barely perceptible. Above all, the way the flesh is rendered gives rise to many comments because of its crucial role in the fascination exerted by Leonardo's portraits. "The thinness of the glaze layers must be underlined: it confirms the dexterity of the painter to apply such thin layers. Moreover, the measured slow and regular evolution of the thickness of the glaze layers implies that numerous layers... have to be applied to obtain the darkest shadows. "Even today, Leonardo's realisation of such thin layers still remains an amazing feat."The scientists used a technique known as x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to study the painting as it allowed them to examine the layers of glaze and paint in detail without having to take samples that would damage the masterpiece. A beam of high energy X-rays were focused on the painting which allowed the researchers to determine how the layers of glaze and paint had been built up while also giving them information about their composition. As well as the Mona Lisa, the team also studied skin tones in six other of Leonardo's most famous paintings, including Virgin of the Rocks, Madonna of the Carnation, Saint John the Baptist and the Virgin and the Child They found that each layer of glaze was around just two micrometers, around 50 times thinner than a human hair. In the lightest areas of the skin, the glaze was found to be very thin but in the darkest areas it had been built up layer upon layer to be up to 55 micrometers thick. Grains of black and red pigment were also found in the glaze, but were so small that they would be impossible to detect using conventional analysis techniques. Dr Walter and his team believe that Leonardo experimented by creating different types of glaze and with different pigments to perfect the sfumato effect. Professor Francis Ames-Lewis, a distinguished art historian and vice-president of the Leonardo da Vinci Society, an organisation devoted to the scholarly study of the Italian painter's work, said: "Leonardo da Vinci was concerned with producing smooth tonal gradients from light to dark without any perceptible change like we see in real life and sfumato was essential to this. "What is extraordinary is the meticulous way he carried this out and the precision of his technique. In the Mona Lisa, he captures a complex and ambiguous personality and conveys it with the help of sfumato."
Noisy secret of Mona Lisa's smile
Christopher Tyler and Leonid Kontsevich at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco manipulated a digital image of the painting by introducing random visual noise - the equivalent of the snow seen on a badly tuned TV set - and asked 12 observers how they rated the resulting expression on a four-point scale from sad to happy.As would be expected, noise that lifted the edges of her mouth made Mona Lisa seem happier, and those that flattened her lips made her seem sadder. More surprising though, was how readily the visual noise changed people's perception of the Mona Lisa's expression.
Tyler says our visual system contains many sources of noise: fluctuations in the number of photons hitting light-receiving cells in the eye, spontaneous false activation of photon absorbing pigments, and randomness in the firing of neurons that carry the visual signals to the brain.
Tyler thinks this natural noise makes people observing the picture believe its expression is subtly changing, rather than thinking they are seeing a single ambiguous expression.
"That may be part of what makes the painting so powerful," he says, something Leonardo must have instinctively realised.
In addition to the enigma of Mona Lisa’s smile, there is still, for example, the enigma of how her eyes seem to follow the viewer and the dynamics of the background. Most importantly, there is the profusion of cultural questions regarding the style of the time period, the identity of Mona Lisa, and Mona Lisa’s relationship to Da Vinci . These questions are important aspects of art that neuroaesthetics could never encompass to address.
Mona Lisa painting 'contains hidden code'
Eyebrow or no eyebrow?
Revelations included:
- The face of Mona Lisa appears slightly wider, the smile is different and the eyes are different
- A zoomed-in image of Mona Lisa’s left eye revealed a single brush stroke in the eyebrow region, uncovering one hair of the eyebrow
- The wrist of the right hand is up high on the stomach and she is actually holding a cover with her wrist
- There is lace on Mona Lisa’s dress
- The transparency of the veil shows Da Vinci first painted a landscape and then used transparency techniques to paint the veil atop it
- A change in the position of the left index and middle finger
- The elbow was repaired from damage due to a rock thrown at the painting in 1956
- The blanket covering Mona Lisa’s knees also covers her stomach
- The left finger was not completely finished
- A blotch mark on the corner of the eye and chin are varnish accidents, countering claims that Mona Lisa was sick
- And the Mona Lisa was painted on uncut poplar board, contrary to speculations.
