The idea that two diverse elements were united in the smile of Monna Lisa has
been felt by many critics. They therefore recognize in the play of features of
the beautiful Florentine lady the most perfect representation of the contrasts
dominating the love-life of the woman which is foreign to man, as that of
reserve and seduction, and of most devoted tenderness and inconsiderateness in
urgent and consuming sensuality. Müntz expresses himself in this manner: "One knows what indecipherable and fascinating
enigma Monna Lisa Gioconda has been putting for nearly four centuries to the
admirers who crowd around her.oil painting for sale No artist (I borrow the expression of the
delicate writer who hides himself under the pseudonym of Pierre de Corlay) has
ever translated in this manner the very essence of femininity: the tenderness
and coquetry, the modesty and quiet voluptuousness, the whole mystery of the
heart which holds itself aloof, of a brain which reflects, and of a personality
who watches itself and yields nothing from herself except radiance...." The
Italian Angelo Conti saw the picture in the Louvre illumined by a ray of the sun and expressed
himself as follows: "The woman smiled with a royal calmness,oil paintings, her instincts of
conquest, of ferocity, the entire heredity of the species, the will of seduction
and ensnaring, the charm of the deceiver, the kindness which conceals acruel purpose, all that appears and disappears
alternately behind the laughing veil and melts into the poem of her smile....
Good and evil, cruelty and compassion, graceful and cat-like, she
laughed...."
Leonardo painted this picture four years, perhaps from 1503 until 1507,
during his second sojourn in Florence when he was about the age of fifty years.
According to Vasari he applied the choicest artifices in order to divert the
lady during the sittings and to hold that smile firmly on her features. Of all
the gracefulness that his brush reproduced on the canvas at that time the
picture preserves but very little in its present state. During its production it
was considered the highest that art could accomplish; it is certain, however,art oil paintings online, that it did not satisfy Leonardo himself, that he pronounced it as unfinished
and did not deliver it to the one who ordered it, but took it with him to France
where his benefactor Francis I, acquired it for the Louvre.
Let us leave the physiognomic riddle of Monna Lisa unsolved, and let us note
the unequivocal fact that her smile fascinated the artist no less than all the spectators for these 400 years. This
captivating smile had thereafter returned in all of his pictures and in those of
his pupils. As Leonardo's Monna Lisa was a portrait we cannot assume that he has
added to her face a trait of his own so difficult to express which she herself
did not possess. It seems, we cannot help but believe, that he found this smile
in his model and became so charmed by it that from now on he endowed it on all
the free creations of his phantasy. This obvious conception is, e.g., expressed
by A. Konstantinowa in the following manner: modern abstract art oil painting
"During the long period in which the master occupied himself with the
portrait of Monna Lisa del Gioconda, he entered into the physiognomic delicacies
of this feminine face with such sympathy of feeling that he transferred these
creatures, especially the mysterious smile and the peculiar glance, to all faces
which he later painted or drew. The mimic peculiarity of Gioconda can even be
perceived in the picture of John the Baptist in the Louvre. But above all they
are distinctly recognized in the features of
Mary in the picture of St. Anne of the Louvre." abstract art oil paintings
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