I have seen Mona Lisa Painting before (Not the actual painting), but never really understood, why is it so popular? In fact I never pursued to resolve this question. Because I don’t have much interest in art. But today when I saw this article I was actually looking forward to read it, that it might answer my question, about its popularity.
One reason described by the author in this article is Mona Lisa’s mysterious face expression, especially her smile. I think Mona Lisa is smiling in this painting, but author does not fully agree that whether she is smiling or not. Kari has three theories to describe Mona Lisa’s face expression. Brush stroke, fields of view and mental images. In my opinion, the brush stroke theory is the most important one in all three because it describes the painter’s view and the way in which painter saw the model and painted it. Kari writes about “sfumato”, a type of brush stroke that causes the smile of Mona Lisa. In my opinion, that is something the painter has to decide that if he wants to show a smile, what technique he should use. So, if Leonardo wanted Mona Lisa to smile in this painting, he used this technique. Hence, it is pretty obvious that Mona Lisa is and was smiling.
The second theory Kari explains is the fields of view and gave some Mona Lisa’s images edited by Livingstone using Photoshop. The face expression does change when he applies different filters in images B, C and D. But I would say this is all because of technology and power of computers. What if we go back in time when there were no computers, and try to see any expression in Mona Lisa’s painting other than smiling. I am sure we wouldn’t be able to see anything else other than smile on her face.
In the third theory, author describes the mental images. I completely agree with her about different perceptions of our mind regarding a certain image. Our opinion about an image can easily change based on our moods. Also sometimes our mind shows us what we want to see. But if I talk about Mona Lisa, my mind never tells me that she is not smiling. I tried to see it in the way that she is not smiling or is sad, but I couldn’t, probably because of my inexperience in the field.
In my opinion, a regular person would always see Mona Lisa smiling regardless of his/her mood or feelings only if it is not edited.
