Looking at the world’s most famous smile in different ways will launch a thousand interpretations...When you see the Mona Lisa, leave whatever it is that you are doing for a moment and direct all your attention towards it for a while. It is not that you will be looking at the portrait for the first time. The Mona Lisa has gone past our eyes several times, sometimes as an animation from a cartoon or sometimes in advertisements selling products ranging from soaps to air conditioners. And it is mostly due to this fact that we have started taking it as “yet another painting”.However, if you look at it closely, you might see why this painting has captured the imagination of both artists and non-artists for over 500 years. A woman, dressed in the Florentine fashion of her day, sits against a hazy, mountainous landscape. What instantly captures the eye is her mysterious smile. Much has been written and lots more is being written on the secret of this mystic smile.Painted by Leonardo da Vinci somewhere between 1503 and 1507 on a 77 x 53cm large piece of poplar wood, and the victim of art theft in 1911, this masterpiece now lies in the Louvre in Paris behind a bullet proof glass. Mona Lisa’s captivating smile shines through even this transparent screen of protection. Its magical effect can be attributed to the ingenious technique invented by Leonardo himself. The technique of Sfumato.What troubled artists before Leonardo da Vinci was their incapability to produce more lifelike portrayals of their models. Despite possessing extraordinary talents, their compositions appear as statues. Artists like Sandro Botticelli tried to overcome this problem by showing waving hair and fluttering garments. But the real solution came when Leonardo da Vinci introduced to the artistic world an inventive skill called Sfumato.The word Sfumato literally means “turned to mist” or “going up in smoke”. By making several thin coats with brush, arduously, Leonardo brought the same smoky feel into his paintings.Ambiguity never bothered Leonardo. It was his ease with paradox that allowed him to work with Sfumato. The shadowy impressions in his paintings not only make them soulful but also leave an enigma for the viewer to fathom.The paradox of Mona Lisa’s hypnotic smile is indeed a classic example of the magic of Sfumato. Similarly, the disproportion that runs throughout this painting is yet another contributor to its lifelike appearance. The horizon at the left is much lower than at the right side and Mona Lisa’s stature towards the right seems more erect and tall.E.H Gombrich in his book, the The Story Of Art, explains: “The blurred outline or mellowed colors allow one form to merge with another always leaving something to our imagination. Everyone who has ever tried to draw or scribble a face knows that what we call its expression lies mainly in two features: the corners of the mouth and the corners of the eyes. Now it is precisely these parts which Leonardo has left deliberately indistinct, by letting them merge into a soft shadow. That is why we are never quite certain, in what mood is Mona Lisa actually looking at us.”Almost every modern thinker and philosopher has interpreted Mona Lisa’s smile. “A womanly equivalent of Christ,” said Bramly, while Sigmund Freud thought of it as the “most perfect representation of the contrasts dominating the love life of a woman.” And 19th century art critic Walter Pater said, “A beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by little cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions.”The identity of Mona Lisa comes into play, when trying to solve the mystery of this smile. Was this paradoxical smile given out of some psychological misfortune that the model actually went through while the portrait was in progress?The story that Louvre puts forward, from Giorgio Vasari’s (Leonardo’s biographer) notes goes something like this: Mona Lisa was the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, the noblest citizen of Florence who ordered Leonardo to paint a portrait of his wife. He began the painting in 1503 and finished the work in 1507. However, he never handed over the picture to Francesco, and instead, took it to France.Maike Vogt-Luerrsen in Who is Mona Lisa? disagrees with Vasari’s version of the story and says that Mona Lisa was the lovesick duchess of Milan who had passion for Leonardo. It was a love story that could not flourish as it was not allowed to. The reason that she looks sad in the portrait is because of her inability to attain her true love.Meanwhile, scientists have discovered an astonishing facet to the portrait that redefines Leonardo’s genius. Scientists at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute at San Francisco say it lies in the design of the human visual system. They experimented with a digital version of the portrait by subjecting it to random visual noise, like TV snow effect. To put it simply, they threw light signals at the digitized portrait. They noticed that variations could alter people’s perception of the “famous smile”. Depending on how they were affected by light, people saw her as happy or sad. Some noise signals lifted her lips, making her look happier, while others flattened the smile making her look sad.One of the researchers at the institute explains that the human sight contains many sources of visual noise; changes in the number of light particles hitting eye cells changes the visual noise and this is what makes the people think Mona Lisa’s smile is changing. Was Leonardo da Vinci aware of this? Did he knew then, what we know now as visual noise? Leonardo da Vinci’s genius is not limited to his talent as an artist. He was an engineer, a scientist, an anatomist. The curiosity surrounding Mona Lisa’s smile has allowed researchers to discover new ways to approach this age-old riddle.However, the most interesting theory was forwarded by Dr Lillian Schwartz of Bell Laboratories. She compared the Mona Lisa with Leonardo da Vinci’s only self-portrait that he chalked in 1518. She explains: “Juxtaposing the images was all that was needed to fuse them: the relative location of the nose, mouth, chin, eyes and forehead in one precisely matched the other. Merely flipping up the corner of the mouth would produce the mysterious smile.”Dr Schwartz, through this remarkable research has shown that the woman who has symbolized western beauty for more than five centuries is indeed Leonardo’s soul image. The maestro’s relationship with paradox was so intense that it remained with him all his life.The Mona Lisa communicates with the viewer immediately, telling him different stories. In order to have your story, look at the painting not as you might have always, but differently. By the end of the four or five minutes, you will come up with an interpretation. Your own solution to the timeless riddle of Mona Lisa.SOURCE:
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/gallery/archive/040911/gallery6.htm
This article is published in daily newspaper THE DAWN dated September 11, 2004.
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