Name: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci: Great Art Explained
Uploaded: 2021-08-04T02:53:45.000Z
Duration: 13 min 51 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

Some people are dissapointed 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.

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, that  centuries later, we are still trying to figure it out.

In 1517, the French king, King Francis I, offered Leonardo a job,

court painter - and engineer - and architect - to the King.

Leonardo, now in his sixties, moved to the Château of  Amboise in France, and never went back to Italy.

He brought with him dozens of sketch books like these.

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 Mona Lisa he used a thin grained piece of poplar tree

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 colours of contrast: Light and Dark.

When you apply glaze over both of them, you  can see it starts to unify the contrast,

The lead white undercoat reflects the light back through his glazes,

giving the picture 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, brush strokes were applied in an irregular way.

And that makes the grain of the skin look more life-like.

All of these techniques pioneered by Leonardo, bring the painting to 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 jewellery? Of course.

Being painted by one of the most celebrated  and in demand painters of the day,

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 jewellery and the simple hair

they serve 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 centre 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. 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 four hundred years after Leonardo pioneers it.

Today, we look at Mona Lisa's pose and it seems fairly normal.

Previously subjects were stiff and upright. Aristocratic.

But Mona Lisa is relaxed, her hands are resting gently on the arm of her chair

Mona Lisa is also rather content and self-assured,

which is more how aristocratic men were portrayed, not women.

We are looking directly into her eyes and she is looking directly at us.

They didn't look boldly and directly at the viewer.

The entire painting deviated from the traditional way

Portraits were usually done with an open sky as the background,

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 Mona Lisa

seems to fade or become more blurred and out of focus, the further

from the subject it extends. This is aerial perspective.

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,

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 the illusion of movement.

The horizon of the landscape does not quite line up behind the figure.

It is very slightly skewed. Whilst her shoulders are 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 then cause 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,

They look the same, no mater from what angle you look at it.

It's a real phenomena, but not unique to this painting.