On 21st August 1911, It was a Monday Morning in the French Capital, Paris. It was quite bustling. People were going to work in their offices. When suddenly, three men came out of the Louvre museum. The three had spent the previous night in the museum. And now, they were carrying an important property of the Louvre Museum that was hidden in a blanket while they were trying to escape. They went to a nearby railway station caught the train at 8.45 in the morning and disappeared. The whole world was unaware of the fact that they had stolen a painting. Not a significant painting but the World’s famous painting The Mona Lisa. Here is an article about “Mystery Behind Mona Lisa Painting”.
Today, this one painting value is close to $1 billion, what are the actual reasons behind this? What are the hidden secrets behinds behind this? Why is this the most famous painting in the world? Let’s understand the Mystery behind Mona Lisa Painting.
Introduction of Lisa Giocondo
Mona Lisa was painted in 1503 by an Italian Artist Leonardo da Vinci. He was not only a painter but also an engineer, scientist, sculptor, architect, and theorist. He had knowledge of so many subjects. Be it painting, cartography, astronomy, anatomy, botany, hydrology, geology, optics, or even paleontology. But let’s focus on the most famous painting created by him “The Mona Lisa Painting”. But, who was this person in the painting? People have always been curious about the identity of the woman in the painting. This first revelation about this was made by an Italian artist named Giorgio Vasari, who wrote the autobiography of Leonardo da Vinci in 1550.
According to Vasari, this woman was Lisa Gheradini. She was married to a silk trader who lived in Florence, Francesco Giocondo. He believed that Francesco had commissioned this painting of his wife and that’s the origin of the names of this painting. The first name we all knew “Mona Lisa”, derived from “Madonna Lisa”. Traditionally, in Italian the word Madonna was used to mean “Madam”. And then comes Mona Lisa’s other name which is a “La Gioconda”. After her marriage, Lisa “Gherardini” became “Lisa Giocondo”. ‘Gioconda’ means 'joyful‘ or ‘cheerful’.
Mona Lisa is famous for her smile.
Lilian Schwartz Research on Mona Lisa Painting
In 1550, despite this revelation, people were not ready to believe that Vasari’s narrative was correct. Many theories started to emerge about this woman being someone else. Some people said that she was Leonardo da Vinci’s Mother. Some said that this was a painting of a queen from the Italian aristocracy. The most interesting theory was that in this painting, da Vinci himself painted himself. This painting is not of a woman but a self-portrait of Da Vinci. Where he imagined how he would have looked had been a woman. This theory was promoted by artist Lilian Schwartz in an article in 1987. She used digital tools to try to show similarities between Leonardo Da Vinci’s face and Mona Lisa’s image.
Professor Pallanti’s 25-Year Research on Mona Lisa Painting
A professor living in Florence researched this for 25 years and found the archives and in 2004, He discovered clear evidence to prove this fact. Although, he also found that the da Vinci family had a close relationship with Francesco Giocondo’s family. He also found a record that Lisa’s marriage was registered on 5th March 1495, when Lisa was 16 years old and Francesco was around 30 years old. Upon research, he found that Leonardo da Vinci’s Father and Lisa’s husband knew each other very well. And it’s possible that this painting was commissioned not by Lisa’s husband but by Leonardo’s father. Pallanti says that when the Mona Lisa was painted, Lisa was 24 years old. And that there might have been two reasons for painting this.
The first reason is in 1503 when Francesco and Lisa bought their home, and the second in December 1502, when their second son was born. The second reason seems more probable because three years before this in 1499, Lisa lost her daughter.
If you look at this painting closely, you will find a veil over Lisa’s hair. Many people call it a mourning veil. It is a veil that is worn when someone in the family has passed away. Now one question arises here if Da Vinci’s Italian, Mona Lisa was Italian then why is this painting in France Today?
The French Revolution 1797
Well, the thing about this is that in the year 1516, the King of France, King Francis I, invited Leonardo da Vinci to live in France. And so, da Vinci moved from Italy to France and took with him the Mona Lisa painting. Historical events aren’t clear about this, but it’s believed that da Vinci hadn’t completed the painting yet. 15 years after starting the painting, he was still working on this painting, trying to modify it and make it better. Meanwhile, in the year 1519 Leonardo da Vinci passed away during their stay in the French palace. The king kept this painting as a part of his Royal Collection.
About 150 years later in 1797, when the French Revolution happened, the painting was taken out of the palace and handed over to the Louvre Museum. An interesting fact was that it was the reason the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911. The mastermind of this theft was Vincenzo Peruggia. he stole this painting together with his two friends. He was an Italian Nationalist. He believed that this painting belonged to Italy. And so after stealing it, they took it to Italy. Stealing such a famous painting was a risky job especially when the value of the painting was millions of dollars. So, Vincenzo wouldn’t have felt safe after this theft.
Specialty of Mona Lisa Painting
The Mona Lisa was not painted on paper, canvas, or cloth. Instead, it was painted on Poplar wood. In those days, it was the favorite wood of Italian painters, secondly, this painting isn’t large. This painting is only 77cm by 53 cm. But still, it is considered so special because at this time, in Italy, this was the first painting that focused so closely on the person. This is a half-length portrait. These types of shots are very common in photography today. But no one used to make such paintings in those days.
If we observe the overall color gradient of this painting, we will see a lot of yellow and brown colors. It looks like a very dull painting. It is so yellowish that at one point, a professor declared Lisa a cholesterol patient. But there are two reasons behind this. First, a varnish layer has been applied to this painting so that moisture does not affect the painting badly. Originally it used to be more bright and colorful. Some people tried to recreate this painting to see how it would have been looked originally. Da Vinci used a very special painting style in this painting, known as Sfumato.
“Sfumato” means Smoky in Italian, is a technique of making very soft or blurred brushstrokes
Mystery of Mona Lisa Smile
This is the secret behind Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile. The more you look at this painting, the more serious this face will look. Suddenly, you will see Lisa smiling more. If you look at any part of the painting, be it the background, Mona Lisa’s forehead, or her eyes you will see the effect. Lisa’s fact starts smiling more when you don’t focus on the smile. To perfect this smile, da Vinci spent the most time. He spends many nights in a hospital in Florence, where he used to go and remove the skin of dead bodies.
Da Vinci wanted to study the facial muscles and nerves and how they work together to create a smile. He wrote in his book that “the muscles which move the lips are more numerous in man than in any other animal”. It was very difficult to dissect the muscles of the face. Because the muscles here are tiny and numerous. During this experiment, da Vinci studied horses as well. He compared human expressions to that of horses.
Da Vinci Research on Horses
Notice Whether The Muscle That Raises The Nostrils Of The Horse Is The Same As That Which Lies Here In Man
Hardly, throughout history, any other artist has dissected the face of a horse and a human and done these experiments. His obsession with Mona Lisa’s smile didn’t end there. After this, he researched n=on optics as well. He found that the light rays don’t merge into a single point in our eyes, rather they spread out over the entire retina. The center of the retina, known as the fovea, helps us see the finest details.
On the other hand, the rest of the retina picks up shadows and black-and-white imagery more. Using this knowledge, he focused on the shadows in such a way that even when you see the Mona Lisa in your peripheral vision, the effect of her smile is still there. When you look at the smile closely, you will see that its central line is flat, this is why when you look at her smile, it looks like she is not smiling at all. But on the other hand, the shadows created using the Sfumato technique, have such an effect that your peripheral vision sees that smile, and its shadows are reflected. And then you feel that Lisa is smiling.
The Raphael Sketch
The Mona Lisa is not one painting, this is not a conspiracy theory it’s the truth. Mona Lisa’a painting as we know, a similar painting was created at the same time. The story of this second Mona Lisa began in the year 1504. When another legendary artist named Raphael made a rough sketch using pen and ink. If we compare it with the Mona Lisa in Louvre, we can see a huge difference.
Here, the researchers believed that Raphael must have made his drawing based on the Mona Lisa painting. So, it was initially brushed off. However, this theory was disapproved by a German art historian in 1993. Professor Pallanti confirmed that Raphael actually lived right in front of the Giocondo family in Florence. But this seems unbelievable.
Do Similar Mona Lisa Painting Exist?
The Second Mona Lisa painting was revealed to the world in 1914. A novelist, living near London. John R. Eyer had a new version of the Mona Lisa. This Mona Lisa was 3.5 inches longer and 5 inches wider than the other one. If we compare these two paintings, we will notice three facts.
- The woman in this new Mona Lisa looks much younger
- The head in this new painting is little forward.
- The expressions of this new Mona Lisa are very straightforward and clear.
Due to all these reasons, here comes a new theory coined by the experts. Leonardo da Vinci was working on two Mona Lisas. Leonardo da Vinci printed both these Mona Lisa. However, the Isleworth Mona Lisa that was later discovered was the first version of da Vinci’s painting. He was experimenting with his styles then and this is why the Mona Lisa in that painting looks younger than the other Mona Lisa.
In 2010, the Mona Lisa Foundation started an investigation on the Isleworth Mona Lisa to find the secret behind it. They said, “Leonardo was responsible for the face and hands of the woman in the Isleworth picture, while an inferior artist must have painted the clumsy landscape in the background”. Both theories remain mere theories because no solid evidence has been found on either side.
