by Giancarlo v. Nacher Malvaioli from his book "The Arts"

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An oil portrait painted on poplar wood. It measures 30.5 in. x 20.14 in. it belongs to the collection of the Louvre Museum in Paris. In Italy they prefer to call "La Gioconda", as Cassiano del Piombo named it for the first time, in 1625. It's known better abroad with the name of Monna Lisa (Madonna Lisa or Signora Lisa or Elisa), as GiorgioVasari entitled it in 1550.

Leonardo started to paint it in 1503 in Florence, he worked up to 1506 with interruptions, according to his habit, and never finished it according to his opinion. Maybe it represents Mrs Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the dealer Giocondo, or perhaps she is a mysterious Florentine lady, whose portrait was entrusted to Leonardo by Giulinano de' Medici, brother of Lorenzo il Magnifico. Or does it deal with a stranger Neapolitan lady? Probably we will never know.

Vasari wrote that Gioconda was very beautiful and that Leonardo painting her had contacted musicians, singers and buffoons, so that the would amuse her and make her smile, to vanish the melancholy that generally appears in traditional portraits. With the years La Gioconda became the typical portrait of excellence and, for one of those mysterious whims of destiny, in the most famous picture of the world.

In fact 62 copies of La Gioconda exist (including some that represented her naked), of which the most known found in museums in Rome, Madrid, London, Innsbruck, Monaco, Baltimore, Tous, Bourg-en-Bresse, and in collections specially English. A copy is attributed to Bernardo Luini, another to the Salaino, others are based on cardboard of Joos van Cleeve, another copy was made by an anonymous Spaniard in 1500.

The picture represents a Renaissance lady, her face appears almost frontally, the body in three quarters give the impression of a turning movement, one of her arms rests on one of the arms of the chair where she sits and her right hand is gently placed on the other.

Opposite to the female portraits of the time the woman does not wear any jewelry or other ornaments. According to Renaissance fashion she has depilated her eyebrows and part of the hair on the forehead, the breast tightened by a bust and veil, that covers her hair, is clearly distinguished by the black line that she has en her forehead. A smile, on which so much has been written and discussed, appears on her lips. A smile that seems to came from an internal light, since no contraction of the facial muscles is noticed. An enigmatic and mysterious smile, that could be also sad and tender, compassionate and sweet or, perhaps, ironic. Leonardo used different pictorial techniques and strange mixture of agglutinations, since the hands of the woman are excellently preserved, while the face appears chapped.

The light that illuminates her face, breast, arms and hands comes from above, to the left who observes her, while the inferior part of the picture remains in shadows. Another source of illumination originates from the horizon, illuminates the landscape and draws the contour or her hair. The beauty of La Gioconda must not be sought in her facial features, but in the harmony of the pictorial elements, in the marvelous originality of the whole and in each single detail, in the wise distribution of colors and also in the perfect smile-landscape according that emanate a mysterious and unreal feeling as a challenge to the intelligence and the spirit of who observes her.

In the background a steep alpine landscape appears, or else there seem to be two different landscapes, separated by the portrait of La Gioconda, since their levels don't correspond with the line of the horizon. In both peaks and steep rocks, sinuous rivers, thin vegetation, lakes and a bridge can be perceived.

The composition is meticulously studied following rules and geometric concepts, placed harmoniously. The figure of La Gioconda corresponds to a truncate cone, while the vertical line of the peaks and the rocks and of the same portrait are balanced with those horizontal lines of her hands and arms, of the baluster of the terrace and the visible arm of the chair, united by the sinuosities of the rivers by the folds of her dress and by the same undulation of her body.

Leonardo always made numerous sketches before starting his painting. Despite this, all that was meticulously studied, really appears as a spontaneous and natural vision. For example the landscape is unreal, and it flows from the imagination of the painter with his unmistakable style.

In fact, as all the great artists, Leonardo doesn't imitate nature, but he recreates it organizing the natural elements according to his personal interpretation, his esthetical an expressive sense, infusing to it a poetical accent.

The landscape and the same La Gioconda are reinterpreted according to the Renaissance concepts, in fact all seems real and unreal, known and mysterious. Double mystery woman-nature. Mysterious identity of the woman, mysterious landscape, that oscillates between the real and the unreal. Two aspects of the same impassioned mystery that invite to investigate, to interpret, to unveil them.

To this point seem to be heard the words of Leonardo child, when one day he came on the threshold of a dark cave: "I reached the entrance of a big cavern, in front of which I remained amazed and ignorant of such thing… immediately I felt two things: fear and desire, fear for the menacing and dark cavern, desire to see if there was some miraculous thing".

The shade and the light, that according to the "Treatise on Painting" (Trattato della Pittura) by Leonardo, are the first two of the eight parts that form this art, they give vitality and dimension to the figure of La Gioconda. Attenuating the 'chiaroscuro' (light and shade), thanks to a wise graduation, the painter uses the 'sfumato'. The shadows are colored, as the impressionists painted three centuries later.

In the same book we read that the blue we see in the atmosphere is not an intrinsic color, but it is produced by warm steam that evaporates in minuscule and sensitive atoms. According to this we notice that Leonardo painted the landscape with bluish and evanescent tones, while as we approach the terrace these tones are transformed in tones rosy and defined. The same atmosphere is denser when it wraps the landscape, but becomes clearer and transparent raising from the ground.

The mind of Leonardo, so systematic, pushed him toward investigation, experimentation, to a meticulous empiricism, but his sensibility and artistic nature succeeded in humanizing science turning it into poetry.

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