Which is the most expensive painting in the Louvre museum of Paris? Majority will say it is the portrait painting under the name “Mona Lisa” is the most costly one. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been the main subject of many debates and speculations for many years and is still continuing. Is it Leonardo’s style of painting or is it Mona Lisa’s mysterious facial expressions that gained wide round of applause from everyone. History tells us that Leonardo completed his much beloved painting in 1503, after working onit for nearly four years. May be the pains behind the painting made it his most favorite one, among his three great portraits of women.
The general fact is that some strange abstraction is there in his all three lady portraits, that is Lady with an Ermine, Ginevra de’ Benci and Mona Lisa. For years people have been trying to explain the secret behind Mona Lisa’s smile and facial expression. Whether they succeed in it, or still trying to unveil the secret? It is the smile on her face and the way she looks at people that got something special in it. Eyes and outer lip points are the most expressive parts of one’s face. And in Mona Lisa, Leonardo purposefully shadowed these areas and this creates the effect of making people to read different emotions and expressions from her face. Whenever we look at her face from different directions there will be different emotions. Moreover, if we keep on looking at her eyes while moving from one corner of the room to the other corner, we will feel like her eyes are following us. As we can’t view the same the portrayed emotions and aspects at each and every time we look into the portrait, this makes the observer confused and left with a sense of mystery.
The style of painting also got great appreciations and many followed that style after its introduction. Jean Pierre Cuzin, who was chief curator of European paintings at the Louvre, stated that, “The entire history of portraiture afterwards depends on the Mona Lisa. If you look at all the other portraits – not only of the Italian Renaissance, but also of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries – if you look at Picasso, at everyone you want to name, all of them were inspired by this painting. Thus it is sort of the root, almost, of occidental portrait painting.” Leonardo was able to make realistic paintings because he had diverse scientific observations. It’s the mathematical calculations he developed by observing the human anatomy made him to use pyramidal composition in his portrait. That’s why we can see a wider base at Mona Lisa’s arms and this when goes up towards forehead will become narrower, giving head and eyes a turn towards the viewer.
Da Vinci also tried to relate his subject with background images. That is why the landscape behind the painting got two different levels of watching experience. Through the landscape painted to the left and to the right, behind Mona Lisa, the portrait got more depth, flexibility and visual beauty. It’s really interesting to watch programs related to different styles of paintings and about the painter on different channels. The painting of Mona Lisa has been stolen by an Italian thief in 1911, later they recovered the portrait and now we can see her in London’s museum.
As paintings like Mona Lisa are very rare and expensive, it should be protected well. Even we have costly paintings in our house and in order to give proper protection to them we should have to use theft alarms of companies like ADT Home Security System. Even now some believe that Mona Lisa is not a portrait at all, but something known as “finzione”, that is Leonardo’s invention based on his unexplained imaginations. If you really want to know the secret behind the smile of Mona Lisa then just go in front of the enlarged picture, then you will understand why Mona Lisa is so special.
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