The mystery of the Mona Lisa

Standing in front of the portrait of Mona Lisa, you will find a decorous, sedate, elegant lady walking into your sight. Her plump and soft hands fully demonstrated her gentle characteristic, identity and class status. Especially that hint of smile on her face make people have the desire to explore stories of her inner world and almost ignore deep vast landscape of background.

 

Mona Lisa is also known as Eternal Smile. It is one of paintings of Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci who is a talented painter, sculptor, architect, poet, philosopher and musician, but also a very accomplished anatomist, mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer and engineer. And it is said that Mona Lisa is a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.

 

This is a prestigious portrait masterstroke. It represents the highest artistic achievements of Leonardo da Vinci, and successfully shapes an image of middle class city lady in the rising capitalism period. In the painting, the painter artfully combined the character's rich inner feelings and her beautiful appearance. The peculiar "smoke-like " and unbounded gradient coloring painting brushwork gives it a rich space as well as lifelike texture. On Mona Lisa's face, with slight shadows appearing dreamily, her eyes and lips look like to be covered with a layer of tulle. More over, the exquisite and meticulous portraying of the character’s manner makes that dream-like smile has a mysterious magical manner. That’s why many art historians called it "the mysterious smile".

 

Mona Lisa attracted many people’s eyeballs, because this character was created with such rich inner world and untold stories that people have had different viewpoints on mysterious smile of "Mona Lisa" for centuries. That is people have different feelings when they look at this portrait at different times or from different perspectives, not to mention the different people. There were numerous of comments and speculations, but leaving behind more and more puzzles. The exploration of Mona Lisa will be endless and this is its marvelous point.