why is the art world obsessed with the mona lisa?

Question

what is it about this painting that makes ppl pay so much attention to it......

what is it about this painting that makes ppl pay so much attention to it......

Answer 1

this is a question i was asking myself this morning! I would love to know!!!

Answer 2

I'd have to agree on the basis of quality. I really don't think it so great a painting. Don't get me wrong, I recognize the genious of Leonardo, but there are many much more interesting paintings from this period.

I think the notion that this was the beginning of the Rennaisance's non religious paintings may be a scholars' fallback answer... though frankly I have really never believed this could possibly be completely true. I find it incredible (as in I cannot believe it) that Every Painter in the European World Never Once painted a still life, a landscape or a secular portrait. I'd be delighted if some more knowlegeable soul here-about could confirm or deny this...

Personally I think the obsession lies in some quirk of market value.

It seems to me that the art market has many strange obsessions through the years. The idea that a Picasso sketch on a napkin could fetch a cool million illustrates to me only that we are talking about bored rich people when we are talking about art collectors.

Answer 3

It's a very important work. Leonardo da Vinci did not complete many paintings to this level of finish and it is also a superb example of the sfumato technique he invented. It also illustrates da Vinci's moti mentali, or motions of the mind. A moments thought caught in a facial gesture. The landscape depicted in the painting is a place where Leonardo would have probably surveyed on during his work with Cesare Borgia and thus gives credence to Leonardo's movements during his life time. This is part of its importance as a piece of art history.

As for its fame, well that has a lot to do with the mystery that surrounds the painting. What you have to appreciate is that you as a viewer has the right to like or dislike a painting but its importance is of no relevance to the general public . Its value lies with what information it can provide for the art historian. I agree that there have been far more beautiful paintings created during the Renaissance and beyond and that many painters other than Leonardo contributed to art but (and I'm putting my art historians hat on now) you can not compare a painting which is simply nice to look at to a painting which imparts so much valuable information and demands constant research.

Have a look at what the Louvre have to say about her also.

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 4

It's the smile. Plus the attention keeps the value of old art high.

How about the new thing where someone said she just gave birth or was pregnant.

Give me a break.

Answer 5

I thought she was the first non-religious painting in the Renaissance. Also, the debate about whether she is smiling or not and who she really was.

Answer 6

Because its an actual depiction of a person. Not some of this Matisse rot that passes for art.

Answer 7

A woman who can be sexy without showing everything (or much of anything) is intriguing for centuries.
And then there is Anna Nicole Smith.

Answer 8

It is such a good painting.

Answer 9

mmmmmm...thats a very gooooooddddd question........