Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci: Great Art Explained

some people are disappointed when they first see the most famous painting in the world at first glance it doesn't have the wow factor that other paintings in the Louvre have it lacks drama but if we can ignore the hundreds of people that surround her if we can turn down the volume and just push the off button for a second what we actually see is a quiet contemplative portrait a portrait that is the greatest psychological portrait ever painted a portrait so ahead of its time the centuries later we are still trying to figure it out [Music] [Applause] [Music] in 1517 the French King King Francis the first offered Leonardo a job court painter and engineer and architect to the King Leonardo now in his sixties moved to the Chateau of Amboise in France and never went back to Italy he brought with him dozens of sketchbooks like these but just one painting the Mona Lisa Leonardo knew how important it was he knew it was a masterpiece Mona Lisa is the end product of the greatest inquisitive mind in history a self-made man with a voracious appetite for knowledge a man who dedicated himself to the study of anatomy geology and philosophy for Monalisa he used a thin grained piece of poplar tree and applied an undercoat of lead white Leonardo painted with glazes that had a very small amount of pigment mixed with the oil so how dark you want your glaze to be depends on how much pigment you use he used more like a wash which he applied thin layer by layer here you can see two colors of contrast light and dark when you apply glaze over both of them you can see it starts to unify the contrast but also brings depth and luminosity the lead white undercoat reflects the light back through his glazes giving the pitcher more depth and in essence lighting Mona Lisa from within as we move around the painting that light shifts around he used tiny almost invisible brushstrokes applied super slowly over months or in Mona Lisa's case years by contrast on her skin the brushstrokes were applied in an irregular way and that makes the grain of the skin look more lifelike all of these techniques pioneered by Leonardo bring the paint into life actually let's start with what she's not wearing when was the last time you employed a professional photographer the answer is usually a wedding or a prom what were you wearing in your prom photo your best clothes your best jewelry of course being painted by one of the most celebrated and in-demand painters of the day is your chance to really show off and yet Mona Lisa is stripped of all the usual high status symbols her clothes are nothing special they tell us nothing instead of the usual flamboyant expensive outfits we usually see in commissioned portraits of the aristocracy hers are pretty simple for a wealthy woman along with the complete lack of jewelry and the simple hair they served one purpose and one purpose only Leonardo made sure we would not be distracted from the face of Mona Lisa Leonardo uses the classic pyramid-shaped composition that was introduced during the Renaissance it is an important change from the paintings of the 15th century the structure provides stability but more importantly it provides a clear center of focus and directs your gaze in Mona Lisa's case it is pulling us into her face the Mona Lisa is the earliest italian portrait to focus on the sitter in a three-quarter length pose rather than full-length but why because he completely fills the frame with his subject making the painting more intimate and cutting down on distractions this three-quarter length pose becomes the norm for 400 years after Leonardo pioneers it today we look at Mona Lisa's pose and it seems fairly normal but for its day it was groundbreaking previously subjects were stiff and upright aristocratic but Mona Lisa is relaxed her hands are resting gently on the arm of her chair as she turns towards us almost as if it's a snapshot Mona Lisa is also rather content and self-assured which was more how aristocratic men were portrayed not women we are looking directly into her eyes and she is looking directly at us women in paintings just didn't do that they didn't look boldly and directly at the viewer the entire painting deviated from the traditional way women were painted in Italy portraits were usually drawn with an open sky as the background a monotone background or a simple room Mona Lisa is in front of a complicated landscape that only existed in Leonardo's imagination paintings of this period had both the subject and the background in sharp focus whereas the background of the Mona Lisa seems to fade or become more blurred and out of focus the further from the subjects it extends this is aerial perspective and Leonardo invented it behind Mona Lisa the vast landscape recedes to distant icy mountains a path and a bridge are our only indication of human presence the curves of her hair and clothing reflect the rolling valleys and rivers behind her connecting humanity and nature a favorite theme of Leonardo's the earth seemed to twist like her torso look at the river on the right it flows into the scarf over her left shoulder we see that she is connected with the earth there is another visual trick that gives an illusion of movement the horizon of the landscape does not quite line up behind the figure it is very slightly skewed whilst her shoulders a painted level Leonardo knew that our brains would struggle with this conflicting visual information we know that the horizon should line up so we read it as level this thing causes us to interpret the shoulders as being on a slant which they are not as our brain corrects this it creates an illusion of movement as if the figure shuffles a little bit in its frame the effect only works with paintings not sculptures or real life since the elements of perspective and light and shadow are fixed in a painting and don't change they look the same no matter from what angle you look at it it's a real phenomena but not unique to this painting the first technique he invented was fool motto meaning smokey fool motto is a blending technique for softening the transition between colors to make sure there are no sharp unnatural lines through layers and layers of those thin semi-transparent glazes he blended everything's film art or style his brushstrokes so subtle as to be invisible to the naked eye in essence this fool motto technique takes painting one stage further it allows us to look at a painting the way our eyes work tonally it allows depth of field never seen in a painting before Mona Lisa we can see what a master of the sfumato he was when we look at the shading around Mona Lisa's eyes the other technique he invented is Chiara squirrel from the Italian of a light dark where he contrasts prominent shades of light and dark to create the illusion of three-dimensional forms seeing Mona Lisa for the first time 500 years ago must have been astonishing then there is the smile that pulls everything together before during and long after the Renaissance artists did not paint this object smiling when you think about it portraits are generally very serious it's easy enough to smile for a few minutes but not for the weeks if not months it takes to paint a portrait leonardo kept her happy though by employing musicians and jesters look at her for a while really look into her eyes first she is smiling and then she's not the smile comes and goes as we scan the face but when we look away the smile lingers when leonardo was perfecting Lisa's smile he was spending his nights in the morgue peeling the flesh of cadavers and exposing the muscles and nerves underneath he became fascinated by how a smile works and analyzed every possible movement of each part of the face working out the origins of every nerve that controls every facial muscle we can see this research in his anatomical drawings here we see puckered lips pouting lips the muscles that move the mouth then almost forgotten at the top of this page is a simple drawing of a gentle smile sketched lightly in black chalk even though the fine lines at the end of the mouth turned down slightly the feeling is that the lips are smiling this simple anatomical drawing is the beginning of Mona Lisa's smile astonishingly Leonardo already knew from his optic studies that light rays do not come to a single point in the eye but instead hit the whole area of the retina and this is the key to her enigmatic smile in the year 2000 dr. Margaret Livingston a Harvard neuroscientist discovered that Mona Lisa's smile comes and goes because of how the human visual system is designed not because the expression is ambiguous she explained that the human eye has two distinct regions for seeing the world a central area called the fovea is where people see colors read fine print and pick out details and the peripheral area surrounding the fovea is where people see black and white motion and shadows when we look at a face we spend most of the time focused on the other person's eyes so when a person's center of gaze is on Mona Lisa's eyes the less accurate peripheral vision is on her mouth and because peripheral vision is not interested in specific details it also picks up shadows from Mona Lisa's cheekbones this is where both his full motto and chiaroscuro techniques come into their own as we look into her eyes the shadows and tone suggests the curvature of a smile but when your eyes go directly to Mona Lisa's mouth your central vision doesn't see the shadows and she isn't smiling smirking at best we can prove this theory quite simply by staring directly into her eyes and think about how much she is smiling then scan back and forth between her eyes and her lips and her expression changes that is not your imagination it is all to do with how we see not how we think the genius of Leonardo is that he understood this 500 years ago the Mona Lisa became the most famous painting in the world not just because of hype or chance but because for 500 years viewers have been able to feel an emotional engagement with her before the Mona Lisa portraits lacked mystery artists only represented outward appearances Mona Lisa however is alive a living breathing woman with a soul when you stand in front of the Mona Lisa you are looking at more than just a portrait of an individual you are looking at the accumulated knowledge of a genius who blended art science and magic to create a profound meditation of what it means to be human whether she is Mona Lisa La Gioconda or logic and she is the face of a revolution in art you [Music]

Channel: Great Art Explained

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Keywords: art explained, art, history of art, Leonardo da vinci, art history, paintings explained, painting, louvre, renaissance art, renaissance, chiaroscuro, sfumato, art techniques, arte, onlineart, creative, artnews, fine art, genius, paintings, oil painting, la gioconda, la joconde, portrait, portrait painting, florence, paris, monalisa, monalisasmile, smile of Mona Lisa, monalisablouse, monalisamotif, Mona Lisa effect, eyes mona lisa, smile, science, history, Michelangelo, Donatello, artist, Mona Lisa, italy

Id: T9JvUDrrXmY

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020