Mona Lisa La Gioconda AKA

Mona Lisa

La Gioconda AKA Mona Lisa

While searching through articles for this topic, one small article entitled, How She got Her Smile, by Amelia Gentleman, became the unintended focus of this paper. In her article Gentleman writes of the experience of actually seeing the painting and remarks how the publicity surrounding it has perhaps become more important than the painting or even the artist himself. In a sense her smile has superceded her background. Gentleman even makes note that in 1911 when the painting had been stolen still many thousands came to look at the empty space where it had hung. (Gentleman 102) Upon asking associates to describe the painting from memory, other than the smile, most seem to know that her hands were folded in her lap, some thought she wore a hood, others though her hair was curled. This was interesting in that she appears to have the slightest of veils over her hair. However, the most remarkable misperception of all was that most thought that the background of the painting was simply the chair she was seated in and the room around it, associating it more with James McNeill Whistler than Leonardo da Vinci. (See Appendix I) No one remembered that the background was a river scene with large rocky mountains looming up behind and around her.

Gentleman quotes the art historian E.H. Gombrich saying that the painting has become so over worn by all these outside references that it is hard to be able to "see it with fresh eyes." (Gentleman 102) That being said, this paper will attempt to see where the artist can be found in this painting, starting with the background. To that end the use of Depth Psychology (Reynolds and Piirto) will be employed in order to use not only simply the intellect, but also to sue one's emotions and spirit or heart in order to truly see the depth, or the unconscious mind, of the artist and his world.

Upon further research it appears that these dark, jagged rocks that appear in the background are often a recurring motif in many Da Vinci's paintings. There is Madonna of the Rocks, Madonna and Christ with Saint Anne, and of course the Mona Lisa. They all seem to represent maternal figures against a background of nature, but not a calm serene nature. There is something more profound that clearly has some personal and deeper meaning for the artist. (Adams 37-38)

And what is this meaning? Mona Lisa is herself and certainly has become an archetype of mysterious beauty. Looking into the background perhaps we are seeing the base or ground of all archetypes. When Karl Jung coined the phrase he specifically formulated it to have the relevance of connectivity not only with the unconscious mind but also with our natural and possibly more uncivilized selves. The background scene here is certainly one of nature and connects the subject with the earth.

Whether he understands them or not, man must remain conscious of the world of archetypes, because in it he is still a part of Nature and is connected to his own roots. A view of the world or a social order that cuts him off from the primordial images of life not only is no culture at all but, in an increasing degree is a prison or a stable. If the primordial images remain conscious in one form or another, the energy that belongs to them can flow freely into man. (Jung, 1959, p. 23)

Perhaps this was Da Vinci's intention, whether he was even aware of it or not, was to bring into focus the idea that all human beings, no matter how civilized, will always be creatures of nature. Whether we are of divine origin is still a matter of conjecture, but we have all certainly sprung from the earth and in that sense earth as mother is certainly represented here. Knowing of Da Vinci's lust for information about the world, his inventions using the laws of nature, this does not seem to big a leap to assume. In fact Arasse had noted in his research that the Da Vinci had drawn a geographical map of Tuscany, but added some artistic interpretations of his own representing what the area may have been like in the past, less refined by civilization. This map is an almost exact replica of the landscape behind the subject. (187)

Da Vinci's use of metaphorical representation is certainly wide ranging and seems to always include some parallel between the human being and the earth. For Da Vinci perhaps, rocks are really the bones of the earth, and rivers the veins and arteries that circulate the life giving elixir of water, and the soil of the earth itself is the flesh. According to Adams this conception has inspired many interpretations of "Mona Lisa as a woman-mountain, a formal echo of the landscape background." (Adams 193)

Others have drawn even more esoteric connections between the subject and the landscape of this portrait. In a review of Da Vinci's journals we find that he was certainly an aficionado of Ovid and the classic Metamorphosis. The recurring theme in that work, and others he read, is that beauty is ephemeral and over time shall fade. Even here, this smile of the Mona Lisa is just a passing moment and would be gone in an instance. If viewing the background as chaos the overriding them may be that from chaos we have come, existed in beauty for a brief moment, but to chaos we will return. However one may also view that the smile, or that beauty is a connective force that binds us to nature and to chaos, not separates us. Undeniably the portrait represents the passage of time, but is it so that we can contemplate our own mortality, or revel in the beauty of the moment? (Arasse 185) in this sense much depends on the one who is viewing the painting at that moment for Da Vinci would certainly have felt comfortable with either representation.

While Da Vinci utilized the style of chiaroscuro (Hubbard 37), which in Italian literally means "light-dark" and is representational of illuminated faces from either candlelight or other low lighting, here in this portrait the lighting is seemingly of sunshine and almost equally illuminates both the subject and the background. However some extra luminance is given to the Mona Lisa's face and hands. The hues of brown and red earth tones in the background are also found in the dress of the subject, further uniting them. The spectrum of colors overall are not widely varied in this painting and are representational as part of Da Vinci's overall style which does not favor flamboyant variations in colors. (Hubbard 37)