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Mona Lisa

            For this art essay I decided to learn and critique on an artist by the name of Leonardo da Vinci. I chose him because I didn't know that much about him and wanted to know why he is so admired and famous? Did he become famous before or after he died? What makes Leonardo unique compared to other artists? I also wanted to learn more about the Mona Lisa. Why is it such famous and valuable painting for just being a picture of a lady? Is the Mona Lisa the Leonardo's only famous painting? All of these questions I hoped to be able to answer.
             Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 and died in 1519. Painting and being an artist is in the da Vinci genes. When Leonardo was just fifteen years old his artistic career had begun. He was an apprentice for a famous artist by the name of Verrochio. While working for Verrochio he did little things in the background of paintings and eventually became an even better painter than Verrochio. From here he became famous in his early twenties. He wasn't only a painter, but also an inventor. Inventing things like flying machines, geometry, mechanics, municipal construction, canals and architecture. Leonardo da Vinci liked to use two main types of techniques in his paintings; sfumato and chiaroscuro. Sfumato is a technique that artists use to make smoky overall haze effect to a painting using a lightly tainted varnish. Leonardo da Vinci liked to use this technique because dusk was his most favorite time of the day and during dusk usually came fog. The other technique he liked to use was chiaroscuro. Chiaroscuro is a technique that an artist uses to define an object through contrast of light and shadowing. He liked to use this technique because it made a picture look more realistic and lifelike. Leonardo da Vinci was the first artist to study the human anatomy. This in return he would use in his paintings to give proportion body parts on human figures.


Essays Related to Mona Lisa

1. Analysis of the Mona Lisa by da Vinci

... of his more famous works of art are "The Last Supper" and "The Vitruvian Man." But perhaps, his most famous and controversial masterpiece is the "Mona Lisa." Leornado da Vinci was born in Italy in 1452. Even as a young boy, he showed interest in painting, sculpture, invention, architecture, music, engineering, ... geology, cartography, mathematics, botany, and writing. Da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa while he was in his early fifties, and as he painted the portrait, he was creating a work that would be heralded as one of the ... as many have speculated. The Lady is dressed in mu...

  • Word Count: 1147
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

2. Secrets of Mona Lisa

... larger than today, because two columns, one on the left and the other on the right side of Mona Lisa, have been cut. That is the reason why it is not easy to recognize that Mona Lisa is sitting on a terrace. It is also mentionable that many details are not visible today, because they ... del Giocondo, one of the noblest citizen of Florence, ordered to Leonardo a portrait of his third wife Lisa di Antonio Maria Gherardini. Leonardo started to work at this painting in 1503. At this time, Mona Lisa was twenty-four year old. He worked at the portrait for the next four years. When Leonardo ...

  • Word Count: 828
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

3. Mona Lisa Smile

... doing what a woman wants to do and even doing it better than a man. The 1950's was a dead time for feminism, but it was there. In Mona Lisa Smile, we see a world full circle of women who are victims of men and even circumstance. These women had everything they were the smartest women in the country. ... obstacle easily surpassed. The one thing that changes Wellesley College was Katherine Watson. Ten years before the feminist movement really embraced women, the women in Mona Lisa Smile were already challenge the role of man and women's liberation and making choices on their own. Katherine...

  • Word Count: 1701
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

4. Film Review: The Mona Lisa Curse

... and to mean to a popularized lucrative business. According to Hughes, this change began around the time the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa, made it's way around the United States. In the film "The Mona Lisa Curse," talks with his friend Robert Rauschenberg, art collectors, and museum curators about the state of the art world today. There were two ... comments in "The Mona Lisa Curse" that particularly stuck out to me. One of Hughes' issues with the world of art is how little money the artists are making and how much collectors are ... ...

  • Word Count: 566
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: High School

5. Leonardo Da Vinci

... as a creative and talented engineer. After the war with Pisa, Leonardo was back to painting. He completed his most famous portrait, La Gioconda (Mona Lisa). The mysterious portrait that took Leonardo 4 years to finish was painted on a 77x53 cm large poplar-wood. This painting made Leonardo da Vinci one ... of the characteristics is the detail in the background that fades in the misty atmosphere. This is called "sfumato" technique. Another is the Mona Lisa and of coarse her hypnotic smile. Some think her mysterious grin meant she was secretly pregnant (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/...

  • Word Count: 2402
  • Approx Pages: 10
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

6. Choose one portrait by Raphael and one by Leonardo and COMPA

... are relaxed, restrained, content and contemplative, while sitting in a three quarter pose. Both women's gestures are similar, hand rested in front of her, along with the veil they both wear. Mona Lisa and La Donna Velata's hairstyles are both smoothed dark hair with a part in the middle, obviously fashionable at the time. Symbols embedded in both portraits is the pyramidal composition giving ... hands rest one of top of another in front of her showing her restrained composure, whereas La Donna Velata's pose is more suggestive, her hand resting on her breast. While Mona Lisa is clothed i...

  • Word Count: 791
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

7. Art

... will be popular as the modern and current trend in art. For example, Mona Lisa is a respectable piece of art that represents the past's traditions. Large Mona Lisa with Plexi by Doug and Mike Starns is a contemporary piece of art that depicts a more recent image of the infamous Mona Lisa. In the modern interpretation, Mona Lisa herself is a lot smaller and blurrier and appears to be more obscure ... from the viewer. That physical distance represents the distance in time between the original Mona Lisa and the present. Also, the contemporary rendition of Mona Lisa seems to be in a state o...

  • Word Count: 1583
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

8. The Life And Famous Work Of Leonardo Da Vinci

... thought that this is why he spent much of his life as a recluse. (www.loadstar.prometeus.net/leonardo/life.html 1) He returned to Florence in 1500. (Hart 96) The Mona Lisa The Mona Lisa is regarded as the most famous and well-known works in all of art history. Leonardo painted it while working on The Battle of Anghiari between 1503 and 1506. Surprisingly ... in two ways: as the echo of a momentary mood, and as a timeless, symbolic expression, akin to the "Archaic smile" of the Greeks." (Janson 456) Interestingly enough, a nude version of the Mona Lisa was made for the king of France. (J...

  • Word Count: 1217
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

9. Leonardo daVinci: Renaissance

... Another of Leonardo's paintings that is extremely well known throughout the world, probably one of the most well known works of art in the world, is the Mona Lisa. Leonardo started work on this painting while he was living in Rome. He was not very well liked in Rome as the Pope had other artists who ... thing to notice about it, is that it is rather odd. We can not really tell where it is or why he chose to put it with Mona Lisa. To use an art term, however, we can see perspective in the fact that the lines of the mountains converge on point the happens to be ... these techniques came t...

  • Word Count: 1197
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

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