Leonardo Da Vinci: "The Mona Lisa"

          The artist I chose to write about is Leonardo Da Vinci. My source was Famous Artists: Leonardo Da Vinci by Antony Mason. Leonardo Da Vinci was a very famous artist in his time. He was born in April 1452 and died in 1519 (Mason 5). His mother was named Caterina, and his father was Ser Piero, a wealthy lawyer and landowner (Mason 6). He was born in Italy during the Rennaissance (Mason 6). Da Vinci studied nature, the anatomy of the human body, and mechanics (Mason 5). He loved animals and was a vegetarian (Mason 8). He had long hair and blue eyes and never married (Mason 8). When he was 15, he went to train as a painter and a sculptor in a studio of a famous artist--Andrea del Verrochio in Florence, Italy (Mason 6). Once Da Vinci got out of Verrochio's studio, he was a proffessional artist (Mason 8).  In 1472 he joined the Guild of St. Luke (Mason 8). Da Vinci spent 17 years in Milan drawing and painting (Mason 10, 14).

           The painting I chose to write about is "The Mona Lisa." It's also known as "La Gioconda" (Mason 21). It was painted in about 1503, during the Renaissance and was one of Da Vinci's favorite paintings (Mason 21). The painting shows a woman with her hands folded in her lap and a mountainous background behind her. She has a calm expression--she's barely smiling, and looks very mysterious. Her smile is the most celebrated smile in the history of painting (Mason 21). The background is known as a background sfumato landscape--near and far effect (Mason 21). The mountains seem to fade into mist in the background. Da Vinci studied the shape of hands before he made the painting, which is why her hands look so realistic (Mason 21). Her clothes fade into darkness at the bottom of the painting, making the painting more mysterious.

            I think the painting is meant to be really mysterious. You can't really tell what the person is feeling, and everything sort of seems to fade away, like it might not actually be there. I feel like the hands are a really big part of the painting. Without showing her hands it's even harder to read her expression. If you cover up the hands, you can see that she could be doing anything, but you don't know. It's like you only see part of her and  don't know what's going on. The hands represent her calmness. Plus, her clothes fade into the dark background at the bottom of the painting, which makes her hands stand out even more, because you can't see anything else.  Also, the way the mountains fade into mist in the background makes it look like she's in the middle of nowhere and looks mysterious. This is an overall very mysterious painting, and I think it can be interpreted differently by different people.