Leonardo da Vinci: Comparing the Mona Lisa and Last Supper

Introduction: The Enigma of Leonardo da Vinci

The name Leonardo da Vinci today conjures up more than simply a vision of famous artworks — the most famous being, arguably, the Mona Lisa. Because of Dan Brown's popular novel The Da Vinci Code, the name also evokes intimations of mysticism and hidden meaning. In fact, that association is not entirely surprising. Da Vinci's "career is a series of contrasts and contradictions that make him one of the most enigmatic figures of all time" (Schultz 1971, 454), even though he left an enormous amount of documentation of his life and work — more than any other artist of his era.

It is fitting that his life should be considered as enigmatic as his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda. Understanding Leonardo requires looking carefully at the works themselves, and nowhere is his range more evident than in a comparison between the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper — two masterpieces separated by six years and strikingly different in nearly every formal dimension.

The Mona Lisa: Composition, Color, and Repose

The Mona Lisa has but one major theme: the figure of a not-particularly-beautiful woman. It is painted in earth tones — and the deeper, duller ones at that. The shadowing that gives form to the relatively monochromatic face and hands is deep and stark, in contrast to the shadowing on the garments. Because those garments are deep browns, blues, and greens — except for a form-establishing light-colored fold at the left shoulder — significant modeling was not possible.

There is little contrast of either hue or value in the Mona Lisa's garments, and equally little in the primarily pastoral background. The background is notably lighter than the foreground figure — a departure from standard compositional practice, in which foreground objects are typically lighter, more detailed, and better modeled.

There is little movement in the picture. In the figure of the Mona Lisa herself, there is complete repose: arms folded, she seems to represent a drawing inward, with just the hint of a smile indicating any relationship at all to her environment or to the viewer. She seems self-involved, yet in a more spiritual way than the sitters of other noble portraits of the era. She is at once self-conscious and studiously unself-conscious. The background is equally passive, despite the fact that it is where any visual rhythm is established. Streams meander behind La Gioconda's back, working their way down from the heights seen at the far rear of the picture. There is a bridge, a plateau, a forest — and a sky that seems to create a disembodied halo behind the figure.

Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa around 1503, when he was living in Florence after several years in Milan. During this Florentine period, Leonardo was also working on significant civil engineering projects, not least of which was the diversion of the Arno River for the use of Florence's population (Schultz 1971). With that context in mind, it is easy to see how the Mona Lisa — a soft, almost vague composition with very little movement — stands in direct contrast not only to many of Leonardo's other works, but also to the other active dimensions of his life at the time.

The Last Supper: Drama, Perspective, and Color

Leonardo painted The Last Supper six years before the Mona Lisa, while living in Milan, where he spent seventeen years in service to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. This period of Leonardo's life is regarded as the most settled, allowing him to devote his attention to painting without undue pressures from other quarters. During this time, "he gradually abandoned the precious painting style of his youth, and developed a new style that had all the earmarks of High Renaissance painting" (Schultz 1971, 455). The Last Supper is considered among the greatest of these new High Renaissance works (Schultz 1971).

The specific stylistic changes Leonardo made include shifting from excitement to drama and from naturalistic observation to rational abstraction (Schultz 1971). The drama in this painting is easy to identify. There may have been more overtly dramatic Biblical scenes — the Resurrection, even the scene at Calvary — but none would have offered Leonardo the same opportunity to explore a dramatic event in both a personal and collective way. A room with a dozen men is small enough for intimacy in revealing emotion, yet large enough to capture the full aura of the event.

As for the shift from naturalism to abstraction, one need only look at Leonardo's magnificent use of linear perspective, so clearly evident in this painting. Within the finite space of the supper room, Leonardo precisely places objects in space using diminishing size and narrowing angles to draw the eye toward the distance — though that distance is, in fact, very close: the rear wall. The three windows function as little more than frames for what might be pictures of the outside world, given the minimal detail of the exterior landscape they reveal.

Leonardo's use of color in The Last Supper stands in contrast to the solemnity of the scene. Everyone present knew that Jesus of Nazareth was a wanted man; he had already warned his followers that he would be arrested and might soon leave them. Yet in Leonardo's painting, the group is attired in bright colors and engaged in animated conversation — the expressions on their faces not uniformly solemn. By setting the scene this way, Leonardo emphasizes the very human nature of these men doing very human things. There is very little hidden about their feelings or motives, which is the precise opposite of the case in the Mona Lisa, whose expression remains inscrutable.

Despite the simple linear plane in which the action takes place, the composition is intricate. The gestures of the figures create a kind of rope, one that seems to change form at any moment. The subtle undulations of the figure placement are intriguing, and the movement along the line of whispering men seems an invitation to eavesdrop.

Conclusion: One Genius, Two Visions

It is undeniable that each painting could be considered the seminal work of its type. What is less immediately clear — or would be, had we not the abundant documentation to prove it — is that each was produced by the same hand. Knowing as much as we do of Leonardo's full and varied life and his extraordinary talents in both the arts and sciences, it becomes somewhat easier to credit the same man with both works.

Indeed, the fact that one can recognize Leonardo's authorship in both paintings, despite their disparate techniques and subject matter, only deepens the sense of his genius. Both masterpieces reflect deliberate, masterful choices. And yet, even with all we know, we remain in complete doubt concerning what the Mona Lisa is thinking.

Works Cited

Da Vinci, Leonardo. La Gioconda. Ibiblio Web site. 8 June 2005.

Da Vinci, Leonardo. The Last Supper. Global Gallery Web site. 8 June 2005.

Schultz, Juergen. "Leonardo Da Vinci." Atlantic Brief Lives: A Biographical Companion to the Arts. Ed. Louis Kronenberger. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1971. 454–457.