Art Essay Example: Mona Lisa's Secrets

Mona Lisa's Secret Is on Her Smile and Gaze

There are various paintings in which the eyes of the subject appear to be moving as the viewer moves away from the painting. This happens due to the good reproduction of the painting. In the case of the Mona Lisa painting, if you stand in front of the painting the subject tends to stare at you if one moves away from side to side, the subjects gaze still tends to be direct. This effect is the effect is closely related to the artist Leonardo, therefore referring it to as the Mona Lisa effect. According to research, there are two secrets behind the gaze in the Mona Lisa portrait, this includes. First, the gaze exists because of the three dimension shadows, real world, and light on the portrait tend to change as our vintage changes which are not the case for the two-dimensional paintings. Secondly, Leonardo's da Vinci mystery of using of lighting and shadows helps to enhance the perception that people tend to have that the painting eyes staring straight out tend to be looking at as even if a person or individual is not directly in front of the painting.

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The smile on Mona Lisa painting tends to be the most engaging and mystical element that tends to capture most people's attention. Such that as the viewer's eyes move a bit, the woman's smile appears to change. Mona Lisa's smile encourages one to revisit the remarkable anatomical drawings of 1508 that tend to show the lips in an open mouth grimace and drawn posed. Leonardo was able to create the smile since he knew that the light rays do not originate from a specific point in the eye instead it hits the entire area of the retina. The central region of the retina known as fovea is effective in picking up colors and the small picture details. While the surrounding area of the fovea is effective in picking shading and shadows therefore when we look at straight at an object, it tends to be sharper while when we view it in a peripherally way, it tends to be blurred. The secret behind the smile is that a clear painting smile is more conspicuous in the low spatial frequency image as compared to the high spatial frequency images. Therefore if a person looks at the painting such that the gaze falls on the picture background, then the person's perception of the mouth will be dominated by low spatial frequencies, therefore, appearing more cheerful than when one looks directly at the mouth.

Mona Lisa's secret is on the background of the painting.

The Mona Lisa portrait represents or portrays an energetic woman seated in front of what appears to look like open logia with dark pillar bases on each side. Also behind the woman's left shoulder, a road heads towards the mountains. On the paintings right side of, there i we s the bridge and the road that heads towards the sea, which appears to be at a distance. The secret in the background is that the bridge and the road offer a slight indication of human presence. The undulating rivers and valleys behind the woman represent the sensuous curves of the woman clothing and hair that is represented in the sfumato. The background contrast of light and dark, the blurred outline, graceful figure and the general feeling of calm in the background are a representation of da Vinci style of painting. Therefore as a result of the expressive synthesis that is achieved by da Vinci between the woman and the landscape Mona Lisa should be viewed as a traditional portrait due to its more representation of an ideal rather than a real woman.

The mystery that Mona Lisa was ill while portraying

When one looks closely at the Mona Lisa painting you notice some small details in the woman that indicate that she was ill, some of this details include, first, in the inner corner of the woman's left eye there appears to be a small freshly bump between the her tear duct and the bridge of the nose. Secondly, the woman's hair tends to be oddly, thin and the hairline recedes behind the veil, and she has no eyebrows. Thirdly, the whites in her eyes appear a bit more yellow than her skin. Fourth, her neck looks visibly bulge on the right side, and her face tends to be slightly puffy. Also on the right hand, there is a conspicuous lump between the forefinger and her index. This sign tends to show that there was something wrong with her. This can be considered true because despite da Vinci being an artist, he was also an anatomist, he did not mess around when it came to the point of capturing the small body details. Therefore, the small details such as the bulge on the eye and neck, and the lank hair, were not accidental. He would not allow any imperfection and other accuracies of imperfection to occur in his paintings. Various researches have tried to predict the disease the woman may have been suffering from. For example, various studies predict that the fleshy bump near the eye may be a sign that she was suffering from xanthelasma which is considered as a yellowish cholesterol layer under the skin surface near the eye. Also, the inflammation on the hand may have been due to 0a fatty benign tumor referred to as lipoma that tends to be rich in cholesterol.

There is no secret behind the painting, just a simple portrait.

The Leonardo da Vinci industry deserves better than the constant media criticism of pseudoscience that tends to surround his artwork. Da Vinci's mind as revealed by his notebooks tends to be a source of endless fascinations just like his several existing paints that are infinitely enigmatic. Instead of the media giving stories that enhance our understanding of da Vinci, the media is focused on endless nonsense stories that tend to make his work of art to appear less meaningful. Usually, there are no secrets behind da Vinci artwork; his paintings are usually normal portraits. For example, when da Vinci first sketched a portrait of the Florentine merchant, she did not smile. The smile was noted to arise as he was reworking the painting over several years. Also in the case of Mona Lisa background, the details such as the valleys, the bridge, and the roads may not represent or give a specific meaning instead they bring out the general outlook of the image. Therefore, everything in his paintings is out of his artistic creation. To him, his paintings are just simple paintings, not some secret skeletal clues hidden in a vault.