Mona Lisa Part 1

Upon first viewing the world's most famed painting, many folks are left, feeling underwhelmed. It may additionally now not possess the immediate charm and aptitude that different works at the Louvre exude; missing the superficial attraction that captivates at a glance.

However, having one control to set apart the bustling crowds surrounding it, dialing down the noise, and urgent pause on exterior distractions, an exclusive standpoint emerges. In essence, what unfolds is a serene and reflective masterpiece: the greatest psychological portrait ever painted. A portrait so ahead of its time that centuries later, we are still trying to figure it out.

The Mona Lisa however is not just the most famous painting in the world, it is also the source of innumerable myths, legends, and suppositions.

In 1516, the 22-year-old French King Francis the first; offered Leonardo a job: Court painter, Engineer and Architect to the king. Leonardo, now in his sixties, moved to the chateau D'Amboise in France and never went back to italy. The young king and Leonardo would form a deep friendship and the artist was given the king's royal summer home Close Lucé where he lived for the last three years of his life - doing what he loved best, learning and creating. He worked on architectural plans for a royal residence in central France, and one of his masterpieces of this period is the double helix stairway at Chambord. He brought dozens of notebooks like these with him to France, but he also brought the Mona Lisa. Leonardo knew how important it was, he knew it was a masterpiece - and he would continue to work on the painting until his death in 1519.

Mona Lisa is the end product of the greatest inquisitive mind in history.

Leonardo anticipated theories by both Galileo and Newton. His anatomical drawings are unparalleled as are his botanical studies. His treatise on painting explored radical new ideas - as we shall see.

He designed war machines, and he had the skill to open the still-beating heart of a pig to explain how ventricles work. He was a man for whom science and art are complementary rather than distinct disciplines. He believed that ideas formulated in one realm could - and should, inform the other. He would take all his scientific knowledge and apply it to the Mona Lisa, a portrait of an ordinary woman that he would transform into a myth. Often called "the first art historian" Giorgio Vasari published his book about the Renaissance artists in 1550, and in it, he wrote the very first account of the painting: "Leonardo undertook to execute for Francesco del Giacondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa - his wife"

There has always been a dispute about Mona Lisa's true identity. But in 2005 a German scholar found a handwritten comment in the margins of a 15th-century book in Heidelberg University's library. It was dated October 1503 and was by Agostini Vespucci, the secretary of Nicolo Machiavelli, the writer of "The Prince" and a good friend of Leonardo. Vespucci notes that "Leonardo was painting a portrait of Lisa del Giacondo". This is an eyewitness account that firmly establishes not only the identity of Mona Lisa but also the date when Leonardo was working on the portrait.

Lisa Gherardini married Francesco del Giacondo in 1495. She was 15 and he was 30. Francesco was a nouveau riche silk merchant. And Lisa was from an old noble family - with no money. She had five children with him and lived a long, and it seems, happy life. One of the great mysteries is why Leonardo, who was used to painting for royalty and Popes, painted the wife of a bourgeois merchant. Family connections - Leonardo's father Ser Pierro da Vinci was Francesco's lawyer, and it was probably pressure from his father that made Leonardo take on such a small commission.

But I think Leonardo painted her because he wanted to paint a relatively ordinary woman, to try out new ideas without the fear of interference. It gave him the unusual opportunity to put all he knew about science and the poetry of painting into the commission.

Mona Lisa would become a vehicle for all that he knew. This high-resolution scan taken by art technician Pascal Cotte in 2004, revealed that there is a similar sketch underneath. The pose looks the same, and it is quite possible that this is the face of the real Mona Lisa.

Leonardo worked on the painting for 16 years. Knowing that it is Lisa del Giacondo gives us more information to work with. One example is, because we have Francesco's will, we know that Lisa owned a large amount of jewelry, that is not shown in the painting and that - as we shall see - is significant.

We can be sure that the Mona Lisa IS Lisa del Giocondo from Florence.

To say that aspects of the Mona Lisa are just "happy accidents" that he just painted and "hoped for the best" is to deny all the evidence of a lifetime spent experimenting with techniques, dissecting human bodies, and collecting scientific and geological data. For a painting with such a huge impact, it is surprisingly small at 77 by 53 centimeters, or 30 by 21 inches.

For the Mona Lisa, Leonardo used a thin grain of poplar tree and applied an undercoat of lead white, rather than just a mix of chalk and pigment. He wanted a reflective base. Leonardo painted with semi-transparent glazes that had a very small amount of pigment mixed with the oil, so how dark you wanted your glaze to be, depends on how much pigment you use. He used more like a "wash", which he applied thinly - layer by layer. Here you can see two colours of contrast - light and dark. When you apply a thin 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 the glazes, giving the picture more depth and in essence, lighting the Mona Lisa from within. As we move around the painting that light shifts around.

The first layer is the lead white ground. Layer two is known as "Imprimatura". This layer gives the painting a transparent toned ground which will allow light to fall onto the painting.

Then we have a dark glaze - and that is followed by various layers of different coloured glazes.

Scientific analysis shows us that Leonardo used up to 30 different layers of painted glaze on the Mona Lisa, applied so thinly that it only totals 40 micrometers of paint! That's half the width of human hair. All of these layers are applied differently, with varying amounts of pigments refracting the light in unique ways. He used tiny, almost invisible brush strokes applied super slowly over months - or in Mona Lisa's case years.

By contrast on her skin, the brush strokes were applied irregularly - and that makes the grain of the skin look more lifelike.

He also used the "Verdaccio" technique. We see it in one of his unfinished works. He would use green as a base color to produce nuanced flesh tones. If you look down at your hands, there is a surprising amount of green showing through the skin. This infrared image taken in 2004 by the Louvre, tells us a lot about his techniques and use of paint.

We know the Mona Lisa was meticulously created - nothing was accidental. A technique he pioneered is "Chiaroscuro", where he contrasts prominent shades of light and dark to create the illusion of three-dimensional forms.

Along with this, Leonardo used the "Sfumato" technique, which he is credited with inventing. Sfumato means "smokey" and it is a blending technique for softening the transition between colors.

To make sure there are no sharp, unnatural lines. The soft blending creates an ambiguous mood, particularly around the corners of the mouth and the corners of the eyes. This means there are no hard edges anywhere on the Mona Lisa. They are all blended in, to form an ambiguous image. You can see how the smile ends at each corner - it simply tails away unresolved and open-ended.

We can demonstrate this with an X-ray. If we put Raphael and Leonardo side by side, an X-ray shows us that Raphael used clearly defined edges whereas Leonardo's figure disappears, as he uses none.

As Leonardo wrote: "The eye never knows the edge of anybody".

This makes her facial expression "blurry" or "fuzzy" so that when we look at her, we perceive the expression in different ways.

THIS brings her to life!

Leonardo understood light as well as optics. The man who had worked out the reflection of light from the Earth to the Moon had also studied how ratios of light and shade hit the face according to the angle of impact. This knowledge combined with the Sfumato, the Chiaroscuro, and the glazes that affect light refraction, means she constantly changes - through optical and perceptual illusion. In essence, these techniques take painting one stage further. It allows us to look at a painting the way our eyes work. It allows "depth of field" never seen in a painting before. The best way to see how incredibly skilled Leonardo was, is by looking at Mona Lisa's gossamer thin veil – taking a closer look.

On her forehead, we can see the dark edges of the silk veil, but the light of her skin shines through the translucent material. But where the veil crosses the sky, it becomes darker and more visible.

He would have painted the background first and then used a transparent glaze to paint the veil over it. His representational skill is spectacular. But his powers of observation are uncanny.

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 jewellery? 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 see in commissioned portraits, hers are pretty simple for a wealthy woman. Along with the complete lack of jewellery and simple hair, they serve one purpose - and one purpose only.

Leonardo was intentional and made sure we would not be distracted from the face of the Mona Lisa.

Let's talk about her eyebrows or lack thereof. It's not down to "fashion". She almost certainly once had them, but over time with cleaning and restoration, the most delicate parts of the painting - her eyebrows and eyelashes - have disappeared. Copies of the painting produced by Leonardo's studio, are a good source of information on how she looked in 1503. And here's why: Leonardo had a team of about six assistants and apprentices. Workshops were training grounds for young artists to learn their craft over several years.

And they begin by copying the master's works. It's how Leonardo, Michelangelo, and other great artists learned. By copying masters - then they developed their style.

Multi-spectral analysis in 2004 by art technician Pascal Cotte, revealed that Leonardo used a preparatory sketch or a "Cartoon" to create the Mona Lisa, using the "Spolvaro" technique, a similar idea to tracing. It is a technique that Renaissance artists would use to make lucrative

copies of their paintings from an original drawing, as well as copies for their students to work on.

There is quite a lot to exhume from the secret tombs of the Mona Lisa art. The next article delves deeper into the unseen realities.