wats....so special in mona lisa's smile??

Answer 1

IT WAS IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME IN FRONT OF THE OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE IT A BOOST TO FAME AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING EXCEPT THAT IT WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE AN ILLUSION BUT WAS INTERPRETED TO GAIN, LIKE TELLING PEOPLE A HOUSE WAS HAUNTED SAME HEAD GAME

Answer 2

Nothing, except that in those days people who commissioned to have their portraits done were not painted with smiles on their face. The Mona Lisa on the other hand remained in Da Vinci's possession till his death and depicting a woman with a smile would have no doubt stir controversy in his time.

Answer 3

Here's what The Louvre say about her;

Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo

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 little more information from me. Vasari says that Leonardo wished to cheer her up and had mucisians play while he painted her. As historian I'm not entirely sure that Vasari actually ever saw the painting. It has been said (most famously in The Da Vinci Code) that this is a self portait of Leonardo. This is derives from the idea that it represents his concept of painting. The viewer looks at the image and sees as the artist saw, the face that looked upon the master and thus will look upon all of us who view her.

Answer 4

It looks more like a man's grin. Supposedly mona lisa started out a man and finished to look like a woman.

Answer 5

the fact maybe that it still looks like a person's smile when it was not based or drawn or copied from another living being?..... :D

oh, ryt... maybe the reason why its special is because no one knows what's so special about it :D

by the way.. hav u noticed that the mona lisa does not have eyebrows?!?!? :D

Answer 6

I have tried to figure that out for last 30 years. She isn't even good looking and I can't see a smile on her face whatsoever.
Thanks, now I have found someone who thinks just about the same.

Answer 7

The female Leonardo da vinci

Answer 8

Mona Lisa is famous for her facial expression and the subtlety of the transitions of tone and color.

The portrait presents the subject from just above the bust, with a distant landscape visible as a backdrop. Leonardo used a pyramid design to place the woman simply and calmly in the space of the painting. Her folded hands form the front corner of the pyramid. Her breast, neck, and face glow in the same light that softly models her hands. The light gives the variety of living surfaces an underlying geometry of spheres and circles, which includes the arc of her famous smile. Sigmund Freud interpreted the 'smile' as signifying Leonardo's erotic attraction to his dear mother;[11] others have described it as both innocent and inviting. It is said by some that the painting is centered on the heart, as is illustrated in this version.

Many researchers have tried to explain why the smile is seen so differently by people. The explanations range from scientific theories about human vision to curious supposition about Mona Lisa's identity and feelings. Professor Margaret Livingstone of Harvard University has argued that the smile is mostly drawn in low spatial frequencies, and so can best be seen from a distance or with one's peripheral vision[12]. Thus, for example, the smile appears more striking when looking at the portrait's eyes than when looking at the mouth itself. Christopher Tyler and Leonid Kontsevich of the Smith-Kettlewell Institute in San Francisco believe that the changing nature of the smile is caused by variable levels of random noise in human visual system.[13] Dina Goldin, Adjunct Professor at Brown University, has argued that the secret is in the dynamic position of Mona Lisa's facial muscles, where our mind's eye unconsciously extends her smile; the result is an unusual dynamicity to the face that invokes subtle yet strong emotions in the viewer of the painting.[14]

It is also notable that Mona Lisa has no visible facial hair at all - including eyebrows and eyelashes. This is probably because it was common at this time for genteel women to pluck them off, since they were considered to be unsightly.[15] [16] For modern viewers this adds to the slightly mysterious semi-abstract quality of the face.


Detail of the eyes
Detail of the mouthIn late 2005, Dutch researchers from the University of Amsterdam ran the painting's image through an "emotion recognition" computer software developed in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[17] The software found the smile to be 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful, 2% angry, less than 1% neutral, and not surprised at all. Rather than being a thorough analysis, the experiment was more of a demonstration of the new technology. The faces of ten women of Mediterranean ancestry were used to create a composite image of a neutral expression. Researchers then compared the composite image to the face in the painting. They used a grid to break the smile into small divisions, then checked it for each of six emotions: happiness, surprise, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness.


Detail of the bust
Detail of the handsAlthough using a seemingly simple formula for portraiture, the expressive synthesis that Leonardo achieved between sitter and landscape has placed this work in the canon of the most popular and most analyzed paintings of all time. The sensuous curves of the woman's hair and clothing, created through sfumato, are echoed in the undulating valleys and rivers behind her. The sense of overall harmony achieved in the painting—especially apparent in the sitter's faint smile—reflects Leonardo's idea of the cosmic link connecting humanity and nature, making this painting an enduring record of Leonardo's vision and genius.





Detail of the background (right side)
Detail of the background (left side)The enigmatic woman is portrayed seated in what appears to be an open loggia with dark pillar bases on either side. Behind her a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains. Winding paths and a distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence. The blurred outlines, graceful figure, dramatic contrasts of light and dark, and overall feeling of calm are characteristic of Leonardo's style.

The painting was one of the first portraits to depict the sitter before an imaginary landscape. One interesting feature of the landscape is that it is uneven. The landscape to the left of the figure is noticeably lower than that to the right of her. This has led some critics to suggest that it was added later.

The painting has been restored numerous times; X-ray examinations have shown that there are three versions of the Mona Lisa hidden under the present one. The thin poplar backing is beginning to show signs of deterioration at a higher rate than previously thought, causing concern from museum curators about the future of the painting.

Answer 9

most think the mona lisa is da vinci as a teen, and since it is also believed he was homosexual....

Answer 10

The "specialness" is in the mystery,,,"Is she or isn't she?"

Like her or not,,,she is likely in the top 3 paintings of all time, question and analyzed so much.

Steven Wolf