is MONA LIZA a man or a woman?

Question

hows that very true she or he did not have eyebrows..?

Answer 1

Have a look at what theexperts at the Louvre have to say about her and you decide.

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 2

In most art history books you will find that Mona Lisa was a woman, and a real person at that. But when Da Vinci painted her he spent an extremely long time on it and it became much more than just a portrait of a woman, in this painting one side of it has a much lower horizon, most books will say that the reason he did this was to make one side of the face look more masculine(or more like him) it wasn't so much a self portrait as just that he saw himself in this woman so he painted it that way......

Answer 3

I know that that The Da Vinci Code has stirred up a lot of interest in Leonardo, and there are those who think that the artist did a self-portrait in women's clothing.

However, I really believe that the Mona Lisa (or La Gioconda ["The Smiling One"]) is, in actuality, a woman.

Answer 4

There's a rumor that the Mona Lisa was a self-portrait of Da Vinci but his model was actually Mona Lisa, the wife of a prominent Italian banker.

Answer 5

Mona Liza sounds like a drag queen.

Answer 6

At first glance its a painting of a woman named Mona Lisa taken after she gives birth to her first son. Some people suggest that the painting is a self portaint of the artist's femine side however-I know its strange! lol

Answer 7

Mona LISA is a woman, but many people believe Da Vinci created her as a woman version of him.


Peach

Answer 8

Mona Lisa is a painting that was drawn by Da vinci.. It is said that he actually painted himself smiling, but without moving a single muscle in the face, that is why the smile looks awkward. And at his time only royalty were painted.. so it drew a big attention to the Mona Lisa.. and about the eyebrows.. I dunno

Answer 9

Well that question as certainly been tossed around for some time now. It is said that it is actually a portrait of Leonardo DeVinci. Meaning he sat and looked in the mirror and drew himself somewhat like a woman and somewhat like a man-himself.

Answer 10

Just a painting, try to stay busy with constructive stuff.
Are we going to look for an eyewitness? That's art. Who cares if is a boy or a girl?
There are lot of other interesting things to talk/ask about that painting.