|
Mona L.
Lisa del Giocondo 1479-1542
Lisa del Giocondo was born Lisa Gherardini.
She married
Francesco di Bartolomeo del
Giocondo, a merchant from Florence.
Hence, the Mona
Lisa is also called La Gioconda.
How did Lisa meet
Leonardo and what makes this painting so
special?
Husband Francesco
commissioned the painting to celebrate either
the purchase of a new home, or the birth of son
Andrea, or both.
Experts tell us
that this painting set the standard for all
future portraits.
Portrait of
Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, known as
the Mona Lisa (the Joconde in French)
Height 0.77 m / 30 in. Width 0.53 m / 20 in.
Musée du Louvre
Why exactly did this painting become
such a
bombshell?
The Louvre tells us:
Such aspects of the work as the
three-quarter view of a figure against a
landscape, the architectural setting, and
the hands joined in the foreground were
already extant in Flemish portraiture of the
second half of the 15th century,
particularly in the works of Hans Memling.
However, the spacial coherence, the
atmospheric illusionism, the monumentality,
and the sheer equilibrium of the work were
all new.
In fact, these aspects were also new to
Leonardo's work, as none of his earlier
portraits display such controlled majesty.
[...]
The Mona Lisa's famous smile represents the
sitter in the same way that the juniper
branches represent Ginevra Benci and the
ermine represents Cecilia Gallerani in their
portraits, in Washington and Krakow
respectively.
|
 |
 |
|
Ginevra de' Benci
Leonardo
da Vinci
National Gallery of Art, Washington |
Lady With an Ermine
(Cecilia
Gallerani)
Leonardo da Vinci
Czartoryski Museum, Krakow |
[...]
The nature of the landscape also plays a
role. The middle distance, on the same level
as the sitter's chest, is in warm colors.
Men live in this space: there is a winding
road and a bridge.
This space represents the
transition between the space of the sitter
and the far distance, where the landscape
becomes a wild and uninhabited space of
rocks and water which stretches to the
horizon, which Leonardo has cleverly drawn
at the level of the sitter's eyes.
This portrait was painted in Florence
between 1503 and 1506. In 1518, it was acquired by
Francis I.
And here is more about
Leonardo da Vinci.
More History
|
