why is the Mona Lisa so popular?

Answer 1

The smile - which is mysterious. The identity of lady herself - also mysterious. The strange background which is raw and untame nature. The artistic qualities of light, color, tone and shape which are historically a departure from previous artists' styles.

Answer 2

The Mona Lisa is so popular because of the mystery and the painter himself. Leonardo Da Vinci, himself was not only an artist and a sculptor, he was a genius on many levels.....His lifestyle through the ages has been construed to be one of controversary and defiance. He was way ahead of the people of his time...a Renaissance Man, in every sense. The Mona Lisa, yes, is quite small, as mentioned by a previous Question "answerer" and it has been speculated that it is Leonardo himself who is the model. There is some evidence that suggests that Leonardo was a homosexual.....not that that is a bad thing, but for his day, it was almost virtually unheard of and frowned upon severely.....which probably led to his notoriety and the Mona Lisa's. The Mona Lisa is "housed" at the Lourve in Paris...where hundreds of people a day walk past this incredible and provocative female portrait.....it is an artistic gem that has layers of mystery around it and since there has not been any other data or solid traces found about the piece...it will always remain a mystery.

Answer 3

Mona Lisa is also know as “La Gioconda” the wife of Francesco del Giocondo it was a commisoned painting for Leonardo Da Vinci to complete but he never gave it to his patron after its completion, to Francesco del Giocondo. The Mona Lisa's enigmatic expression, which seems both alluring and aloof, has given the portrait universal fame. He traveled with The Mona Lisa everywhere until his death in Paris. I guess nobody will know why The Mona Lisa is smiling?

Answer 4

For 4 reasons.

1...No one has been able to determine who she was.

2...She is smiling. Back then, people almost NEVER smiled, especially while having a portrait painted of them.
That would be very uncomfortable, to hold a smile, that long.

3...Some believe(and there's a lot of evidence to back this up), that the Mona Lisa was actually a painting of Da Vinci, himself, made to look like a woman, as a prank.

4..all the contraversy over that book and movie, "The Da Vinci Code", has lead some to believe, that it is a portrait of Mary Magnaline and that she was married to Jesus.

Answer 5

Because of the mystery that surrounds her.Have a look at what the Louvre have to say about her.

This portrait was doubtless painted in Florence between 1503 and 1506. It is thought to be of Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine cloth merchant named Francesco del Giocondo - hence the alternative title, La Gioconda. However, Leonardo seems to have taken the completed portrait to France rather than giving it to the person who commissioned it. It was eventually returned to Italy by Leonardo's student and heir Salai. It is not known how the painting came to be in François I's collection.



Description


Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco Giocondo

The history of the Mona Lisa is shrouded in mystery. Among the aspects which remain unclear are the exact identity of the sitter, who commissioned the portrait, how long Leonardo worked on the painting, how long he kept it, and how it came to be in the French royal collection.
The portrait may have been painted to mark one of two events - either when Francesco del Giocondo and his wife bought their own house in 1503, or when their second son, Andrea, was born in December 1502 after the death of a daughter in 1499. The delicate dark veil that covers Mona Lisa's hair is sometimes considered a mourning veil. In fact, such veils were commonly worn as a mark of virtue. Her clothing is unremarkable. Neither the yellow sleeves of her gown, nor her pleated gown, nor the scarf delicately draped round her shoulders are signs of aristocratic status.


A new artistic formula


The Mona Lisa is the earliest Italian portrait to focus so closely on the sitter in a half-length portrait. The painting is generous enough in its dimensions to include the arms and hands without them touching the frame. The portrait is painted to a realistic scale in the highly structured space where it has the fullness of volume of a sculpture in the round. The figure is shown in half-length, from the head to the waist, sitting in a chair whose arm is resting on balusters. She is resting her left arm on the arm of the chair, which is placed in front of a loggia, suggested by the parapet behind her and the two fragmentary columns framing the figure and forming a "window" looking out over the landscape. The perfection of this new artistic formula explains its immediate influence on Florentine and Lombard art of the early 16th century. Such aspects of the work as the three-quarter view of a figure against a landscape, the architectural setting, and the hands joined in the foreground were already extant in Flemish portraiture of the second half of the 15th century, particularly in the works of Hans Memling. However, the spacial coherence, the atmospheric illusionism, the monumentality, and the sheer equilibrium of the work were all new. In fact, these aspects were also new to Leonardo's work, as none of his earlier portraits display such controlled majesty.


An emblematic smile

The Mona Lisa's famous smile represents the sitter in the same way that the juniper branches represent Ginevra Benci and the ermine represents Cecilia Gallerani in their portraits, in Washington and Krakow respectively. It is a visual representation of the idea of happiness suggested by the word "gioconda" in Italian. Leonardo made this notion of happiness the central motif of the portrait: it is this notion which makes the work such an ideal. The nature of the landscape also plays a role. The middle distance, on the same level as the sitter's chest, is in warm colors. Men live in this space: there is a winding road and a bridge. This space represents the transition between the space of the sitter and the far distance, where the landscape becomes a wild and uninhabited space of rocks and water which stretches to the horizon, which Leonardo has cleverly drawn at the level of the sitter's eyes.

Answer 6

I've never been able to figure that out myself. There are hundreds of paintings in the Uffizi or the Louvre I'd rather have.

Why is American Idol popular? Popular usually equals mediocore.

Answer 7

I really do not know. But from what I have been told by people that have actually seen it is that you cannot appreciate its beauty until you see it for yourself. I have also heard that the portrait is a lot smaller than you would think.

Answer 8

Because it's worth millions of dollars

Answer 9

Because no one knows who she was, because da vinci took it with him when ever he traveled, and becuase the painting itself was never finished.

Answer 10

because there are a lot of unanswered questions that the best scholars in the world can only speculate about. :-)