leonardo da vinci finished painting the mona lisa in the 1490s.
leonardo da vinci finished painting the mona lisa in the 1490s.
when did leonardo da vinci finish painting the mona lisa?
1490s
leonardo da vinci had begun working on a portrait of lisa del giocondo, the model of the "mona lisa", by october 1503. it is believed by some that the "mona lisa" was begun in 1503 or 1504 in florence. although the louvre states that it was "doubtless painted between 1503 and 1506", art historian martin kemp says that there are some difficulties in confirming the dates with certainty. in addition, many leonardo experts, such as carlo pedretti and alessandro vezzosi, are of the opinion that the painting is characteristic of leonardo's style in the final years of his life, post-1513. other academics argue that, given the historical documentation, leonardo would have painted the work from 1513. according to giorgio vasari, "after he had lingered over it four years, [he] left it unfinished". in 1516, leonardo was invited by king francis i to work at the clos lucé near the château d'amboise; it is believed that he took the "mona lisa" with him and continued to work on it after he moved to france. art historian carmen c. bambach has concluded that leonardo probably continued refining the work until 1516 or 1517. leonardo's right hand was paralytic circa 1517, which may indicate why he left the "mona lisa" unfinished.
mona lisa
schwartz used the works of leonardo da vinci extensively in experiments with computers. one notable work she created is "mona/leo", for which she compared the image of a leonardo da vinci self-portrait with the "mona lisa", matching the two faces feature by feature to show their underlying structural similarity. specifically, she replaced the right side of the "mona lisa" with the flipped left side of a red chalk self-portrait of leonardo. superimposed lines drawn on the image showing the close alignments of the bottom of the eye, eyebrow, nose and chin prompted her to argue that the mona lisa is in part a cryptic self-portrait of the artist. in further experiments along these lines, she removed the gray tones in leonardo da vinci's self-portrait and superimposed the "mona lisa" eye over it. not everyone is convinced by her argument for the identity of leonardo da vinci and the "mona lisa"; one common counter-argument is that the similarities are due to both portraits having been created by the same person and therefore bearing the hallmarks of a characteristic style. additionally, though the drawing on which schwartz based the comparison is held to be a self-portrait, there is no firm historical evidence to support this theory.
lillian schwartz