Was Mona Lisa pregnant when she posed?

Answer 1

There's lots of theories aboud with regard to the Mona Lisa. Here's what the Louvre 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.


Here's a report that the BBC aired today.

Mona Lisa pregnancy theory mooted

The scans can look beneath old paint and varnish
The famous smile on Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa could be because she is pregnant or had just had a baby, research suggests.
Canadian scientists used laser and infrared scans to produce a 3D image of the painting.

This allowed details beneath layers of paint to be seen - including a gauzy dress then associated with pregnant or new mothers.

It also showed the 500-year-old picture was in good condition.

The scans, using a resolution 10 times finer than a human hair, did reveal some warping to the wooden back of the painting.

Too dark

The team from National Research Council of Canada (NRC) were given rare access to the painting at its home in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

It said other details obscured by darkened paint and varnish included the hair originally being in a bun and a slightly different posture, as well as the gauze dress.

"This type of gauze dress ... was typical of the kind worn in early 16th Century Italy by women who were pregnant or who had just given birth," said Bruno Mottin of the French Museums' Center for Research and Restoration.

"This is something that had never been seen up to now because the painting was always judged to be dark and difficult to examine."

The technique is unlike anything we've ever seen before

John Taylor, National Research Council of Canada
The woman herself has been identified as the wife of Florentine businessman Francesco del Giocondo.

Mystery remains

Da Vinci was commissioned to paint the portrait between 1503 and 1506 but kept it and may have altered it several times.

While some questions about the painting may have been answered, other mysteries remain - particularly around how the image was created.

The method of Da Vinci's sfumato - or smoky - painting technique continues to elude experts.

John Taylor, from the NRC, said: "It's extremely thinly painted and extremely flat, and yet the details of the curls of hair, for example, are extremely distinct.

"So, the technique is unlike anything we've ever seen before".

If you go to this website you can see the video of the news report.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment

Answer 2

Did Mona Lisa even exist as a real person?

Answer 3

Was Mona Lisa pregnant when she posed?
ANGELA DOLAND
Associated Press

PARIS - Researchers using three-dimensional technology to study the "Mona Lisa" say the woman depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's 16th century masterpiece was either pregnant or had recently given birth when she sat for the painting.

That was one of many discoveries found by French and Canadian researchers during one of the most extensive physical examinations ever carried out on the artwork.

"Thanks to laser scanning, we were able to uncover the very fine gauze veil Mona Lisa was wearing on her dress. This was something typical for either soon-to-be or new mothers at the time," Michel Menu, research director of the French Museums' Center for Research and Restoration, said Wednesday on LCI television.

Menu said a number of art historians had suggested that she was pregnant or had just given birth.

Researchers have established that the picture was of Lisa Gherardini, wife of obscure Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocond, and that Leonardo started painting it in 1503.

The name "Mona Lisa" is the equivalent of "Madame Lisa." La Joconde, as the painting is referred to in many countries, is the French version of her married name.

The scan revealed depth resolution so detailed it was possible to see differences in the height around the paint surface cracks and in the thickness of the varnish.

"We now have very precise information about the thickness of the layers," Bruno Mottin, of the French restoration center, told reporters in Ottawa, Canada. "We know how the painting is painted, with very thin layers of painting. That's one of the things we couldn't see by the naked eye, and that Canadian technology brought us."

John Taylor of Canada's National Research Council said there were no signs of any brush stroke. "That includes the very fine details of the embroidery on the dress, the hair," he said. "This is the 'je ne sais quoi' of Leonardo. The genius. We don't know how he applied it."

The scan even revealed Leonardo's first conception of Mona Lisa.

"The 3-D imaging was able to detect the incised drawing to provide us with da Vinci's general conception for the composition," said Christian Lahanier, head of the documentation department of the French research center.

The artist brought the painting to France in 1517. It has been in the Louvre Museum since 1804.

The data collected in 16 hours of scanning, starting in 2004, took a year to analyze. It shows warping in the poplar panel Leonardo used as his canvas, but the Mona Lisa smile is not threatened.

"We didn't see any sign of paint lifting," Taylor said. "So for a 500-year-old painting, it's very good news. And if they continue to keep it the way they have in an environment-controlled chamber, it could remain like that for a very long time."

Menu said all the secrets behind the enigmatic painting have yet to be revealed, including Leonardo's techniques.

"We particularly want to understand how he painted his shadows, the famous 'fumato' effect," Menu said.

Answer 4

As they said in the release the painting has aged so much it's hard to tell exactly what was painted. It could be that type of clothing that they wore when they were expecting back then or it could just very well be a scarf as they also said. With a painting like that it's almost impossible to tell, it's aged so much that the fine details are gone and it's hard to figure out anything, especially when the painter is dead!!

Answer 5

how can Mona Lisa be pregnant when supposedly she was a man

Answer 6

actually they say that when Picasso drew Mona Lisa he was actually drawing a pic. of himself. they say that because they compared a pic of him and Mona Lisa and they came out exactly the same except he drew himself as a women.

Answer 7

By the way her hands are posed it appears she may have been. Now it's in the news that she may have been.
I always thought the way her hands were posed was indicative of her being pregnant.

Answer 8

I heard she had just had her 2nd child or something??? It was on tv yesterday or the day before.

Answer 9

Yes with Anna Nicole's lawyers kid.

Answer 10

Who really gives a crap? Why is this even news at all?