Among about sixty alleged Mona Lisa portraits spread around Europe, the United States and Japan, one seems to stands out of all by its discretion: the Isleworth Mona Lisa or “Earlier Mona Lisa”, an oil-on-canvas work that is slightly larger (84.8 x 64.8 cm) than the celebrated version of the Paris Louvre (78.8 x 53.3 cm), also older. Basically, the two paintings are similar and, at first, draw attention to the fact that the model from the first version is younger and more alluring.
Most reliable origins from the painting go back to the eighteenth century, when it was acquired from its Italian owner and brought to Great Britain, where it would be part of an aristocrat patrimony in Somerset for almost two centuries. It was subsequently acquired by William Hugh Blaker, curator of the Holburne Museum of Art in Bath, a connoisseur and acclaimed art collector, who brought it to his home in Isleworth, a suburb of west London in 1913. During the First War, for safety reasons, the painting was sent to the United States. Many years later, after its return to Great Britain, the British art collector and publisher Dr. Henry F. Pulitzer became the new owner of the work. Pulitzer is the author of a major study about the painting, published with the title “Where is the Mona Lisa?”, probably in 1966 (the work presents no exact references for its publication year). After his death in 1979, the painting became the property of his companion, Elizabeth Meyer. When she passed away in 2008, the portrait passed into the hands of an international consortium in Geneva, Switzerland. The portrait was delegated to the Mona Lisa Foundation (founded in 2010 with a headquarters in Zurich), and charged with the task of searching absolutely everything about it, then publish and promote it worldwide.
Lisa, the young ‘Gioconda’. The character of the Earlier Mona Lisa, in Dr. Pulitzer’s opinion, was the real Mona Lisa (“mona”, which, in old Italian, means “lady“), a woman 19 years younger than the figure portrayed in the Louvre – who was about 34 years old at the time the Louvre portrait was completed. The model, called Lisa Maria de Noldo Gherardini (previously, Lisa Camila Gherardini), was the wife of a wealthy Florentine silk merchant called Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo. While sitting for the portrait, she wore what looked like a thin mourning veil covering her head, since her little daughter had passed away several months earlier; something not so clear in the classic version. The later Louvre version depicts a lady who could be a mistress of Giuliano de Medici, Costanza D’Avallos, also known as “Gioconda,” whose silhouette was allegedly used in the same design scheme of the previous version. In that interpretation, the term “Gioconda,” or “smiling,” does not have anything to do with the name Del “Giocondo”, and instead refers to the smiling expression in the original Italian language. For other researchers, the true identity of La Gioconda would be Isabella Gualanda (another mistress of Giuliano), or Isabella d’Este; or even Cecilia Gallerani (the model for Lady with an Ermine, today in Cracow), who were both figures of Italian society of that time... as well as, perhaps, Bianca Giovanna Sforza (daughter of Ludovico, il Mouro), or some Spanish courtesan, among other contenders.
Most reliable origins from the painting go back to the eighteenth century, when it was acquired from its Italian owner and brought to Great Britain, where it would be part of an aristocrat patrimony in Somerset for almost two centuries. It was subsequently acquired by William Hugh Blaker, curator of the Holburne Museum of Art in Bath, a connoisseur and acclaimed art collector, who brought it to his home in Isleworth, a suburb of west London in 1913. During the First War, for safety reasons, the painting was sent to the United States. Many years later, after its return to Great Britain, the British art collector and publisher Dr. Henry F. Pulitzer became the new owner of the work. Pulitzer is the author of a major study about the painting, published with the title “Where is the Mona Lisa?”, probably in 1966 (the work presents no exact references for its publication year). After his death in 1979, the painting became the property of his companion, Elizabeth Meyer. When she passed away in 2008, the portrait passed into the hands of an international consortium in Geneva, Switzerland. The portrait was delegated to the Mona Lisa Foundation (founded in 2010 with a headquarters in Zurich), and charged with the task of searching absolutely everything about it, then publish and promote it worldwide.
Lisa, the young ‘Gioconda’. The character of the Earlier Mona Lisa, in Dr. Pulitzer’s opinion, was the real Mona Lisa (“mona”, which, in old Italian, means “lady“), a woman 19 years younger than the figure portrayed in the Louvre – who was about 34 years old at the time the Louvre portrait was completed. The model, called Lisa Maria de Noldo Gherardini (previously, Lisa Camila Gherardini), was the wife of a wealthy Florentine silk merchant called Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo. While sitting for the portrait, she wore what looked like a thin mourning veil covering her head, since her little daughter had passed away several months earlier; something not so clear in the classic version. The later Louvre version depicts a lady who could be a mistress of Giuliano de Medici, Costanza D’Avallos, also known as “Gioconda,” whose silhouette was allegedly used in the same design scheme of the previous version. In that interpretation, the term “Gioconda,” or “smiling,” does not have anything to do with the name Del “Giocondo”, and instead refers to the smiling expression in the original Italian language. For other researchers, the true identity of La Gioconda would be Isabella Gualanda (another mistress of Giuliano), or Isabella d’Este; or even Cecilia Gallerani (the model for Lady with an Ermine, today in Cracow), who were both figures of Italian society of that time... as well as, perhaps, Bianca Giovanna Sforza (daughter of Ludovico, il Mouro), or some Spanish courtesan, among other contenders.
Isleworth Mona Lisa: Lisa Gherardini's youth as opposed to the Paris version - Private Collection (Photo: The Mona Lisa Foundation).
A controversial theory. One of the most traditional sources about the Mona Lisa, the book by the Italian Renaissance artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari (Leonardo, apparently, never left any note about the portrait), could decisively put an end to this controversy. However, Dr. Pulitzer questions the text’s validation when he argues that Vasari never came to see the Mona Lisa that is today in the Louvre, since he was only four years old when the portrait went to France. Besides, the artist never visited the country. Nevertheless, he would describe in detail a painting with the same characteristics of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, which was then in the collection of Francesco Del Giocondo’s house, who may have been his friend.
In addition, the distinguished chronicler Giovanni Lomazzo wrote about the painting in his 1584 book, in which he clearly distinguishes between two works: the “della Gioconda” and “di Mona Lisa.” Moreover, in a letter from Isabella d’Este’s acquaintance, a vicar from Mantua, there is a reference about Leonardo working on two portraits – and, by the date, can be concluded, that there were two versions of the Mona Lisa.
In Cloux, France, Cardinal D’Aragon’s secretary, Antonio of Beatis, took notes of a conversation that the cardinal had with Leonardo, which suggests that the work in the Louvre would had ordered by Giuliano of Medici (see above my reference to Costanza). Pulitzer also presented the following data:
1) One of the specialists called to examine the Gioconda after it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, Prof. Commendatore Lorenzo Cecconi, authenticated the Isleworth version in London as a Leonardo autograph.
2) John Eyre, Hugh Blaker’s stepfather, also an art connoisseur, wrote in his publication The Two Mona Lisas (1924) that the hands and face in the the Isleworth version are unquestionably marks of Leonardo.
3) According to an article published in The Century Magazine (February 1914 edition), signed by Walter Littlefield, yet another version, the newly-restored Gioconda Velata in the Prado Museum (Madrid) had been acquired by Charles I of Spain in order to compete with François I of France and his “original” portrait. This painting was seen as legitimate at the time, but the growing glamorization and mystique of the Paris version were gradually blurring its importance and legitimacy. However, today, the most accepted version is that Francesco Melzi, Leonardo’s assistant, authored the ‘Velata’ was.
The Madrid Mona Lisa. The background of Madrid version – once black – was removed in 2012, revealing an analogous landscape to the Louvre’s version. However, it was posited that these two models (from Madrid and Paris) were, actually, one and the same woman, based on the Spanish version. If that were true, it would deprive the Louvre’s version from its more “mature” status – something that has always been obvious to any observer. To sustain the thesis, these authors argued that the Louvre Mona Lisa looks older because of the aged varnishes and craquelures that turned her into a woman of middle age.
The issue with this theory is that, if this is true, then everything that has been written and discussed during the last centuries concerning old paintings should be discarded, since all of them went through the same aging processes, thus making it impossible the specialists to understand the real age of any portrait. Moreover, these effects only become noticeable when the model’s face is seen more closely. Therefore, the viewer would be forced to escape the proposed Renaissance contemplation of the human figure in its entirety, which can only be achieved at a certain distance. Thus, we must conclude that craquelures and related effects never had such an impact as to confuse youth with maturity. If the model of Paris appears to be older than her cousin in Prado, the reason is that it was intended that way, even if they are based on the same cartoon. Therefore, the youthfulness of the “Velata” would corroborate the “Isleworth”, since evidence suggests it emerged from the same original.
Discussions and Further Evidence. Henry Pulitzer argued that professors have a tendency to dislike when a work of some unprecedented genius arises. These conditions may compel them to reconsider many of their research; hard-built theories or even that could invalidate an academic life or name.
Since the days of Pulitzer and later, the Swiss consortium, the painting has become the subject of a genuine crusade to show that it is a Da Vinci autograph; and, moreover, that it depicts the same woman as in the Louvre version – which would be confirmed in future studies. To this end, the Mona Lisa Foundation has made a great effort by collecting evidence from different fields of knowledge. It has followed all methodological criteria for scientific research under the supervision of renowned experts, such as Prof. Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci – a leading authority on Leonardo in the world – and Prof. John F. Asmus, Research Physicist at the University of California, San Diego, in addition to Swiss laboratories such as the Swiss Institute for Art Research.
A great number of tests were performed with ultraviolet light, radiocarbon dating and measurements of spectrometry by gamma-ray, which concluded that the painting was executed at some time in the beginning of the sixteenth century. In 2005, further tests showed that the pigments used were indeed available in Florence at the time of Da Vinci. These tests were conducted by, among others, Professor Hermann Kuhn, Munich – pigment analysis; the Swiss Institute for Art Research, Zurich - pigment analysis; Editech (Dr. Mauricio Seracini), Florence - pigment and support analysis; Lumiere Technology (Pascal Cotte), Paris – Multispectral Digitization; Professor Alfonso Rubino, Italy – geometrical analysis; The Mona Lisa Foundation, Zurich - visual, spectral and mathematical analysis; The University of Oxford, Research Laboratory, UK – radiocarbon dating; The School of Science and Technology (Prof. Hans-Arno Synal), Zurich – radiocarbon dating; and Professor John Asmus, University of San Diego, California – scientific studies about reflections, brushstroke identification, and spectral and spatial comparative analysis. Lastly, the results of thirty-five years of intensive research recently became available at the website (http://monalisa.org), and at the release of the book Mona Lisa - Leonardo’s Earlier Version, for the most part, signed by the art historian Stanley B. Feldman. In addition, it was found that the treatment scrupulously followed Leonardo’s prescriptions in his Trattato della Pittura. For example, the pigments chosen for the painting primer (a combination of ochre-red, light brown and calcite - CaCO3, in trend in High Renaissance, and quartz) are the same or similar to the primer of his other works. See La Belle Ferronnière, The St. Anne and the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. In respect to the last one, Asmus would say spectral similarities indicated to be originated from the same palette. All of these tests would support the theory that the Isleworth portrait is an authentic Leonardo and that its model is the young Lisa Gherardini, who was 11 to 12 years younger than the model in the Louvre’s version.
In 2005, this theory received considerable reinforcement by the discovery at the University of Heidelberg in Germany of notes by a secretary of Niccolò Machiavelli, Agostino Vespucci, dated to 1503. According to this document, the author had witnessed Leonardo working on the portrait of Lisa Del Giocondo. Note that today, much of the academic world agrees that the Paris Gioconda, for more specific technical reasons, was mainly executed sometime after 1508. The criticism that the Isleworth version could not be an original only because it was painted on canvas rather than wood (on that time, by far the most used support), is pointless. This would be like saying, five hundred years from now, that scholars of the cultural history of the Twentieth Century will refuse to admit that Tom Hanks may be the same actor from Philadelphia, or Saving Private Ryan, only because he was also the protagonist of the most popular comedies of the 1980s For example, the Madonna de Benois, today in Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, is a painting over canvas authenticated by virtually every Leonardo expert.
If we admit that the artist was a genius, open to any and all types of innovations and experiments – including as it pertained to his art – it is no surprise that he would be inclined to new techniques and substituting the popular poplar support for something new.
This fascination with experimental techniques is the reason for the disaster that struck his second most famous work, ‘The Last Supper’ in Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, which deteriorated due to an unreliable tempera technique. This is a particularly curious thing about Leonardo scholarship: when Leonardo is unsuccessful with a new experiment, it is routinely accepted as his responsibility. Yet, in the case of the Earlier Mona Lisa, where his work was executed perfectly, why not give him the credit? Leonardo wrote extensively on the subject of using a canvas in his Trattato della Pittura, published posthumously in 1651.
Even though these are interesting ideas, the fact is that, the Mona Lisa Foundation today identifies the Earlier and the Louvre portraits as depicting the same person. One of their strongest arguments, almost a definitive proof, is the comment of secretary Antonio de Beatis about their visit to Leonardo’s manor in France, where the artist resided at the invitation of François I. This meeting took place in 1517, which is when the secretary identified one of the canvases presented by the artist as a portrait of “a certain Florentine lady, done naturally at the request of the late Magnificent Giuliano Medici.” Given the date, we can only conclude that this is referring to the Louvre’s version, since it would soon belong to the French royal collections with The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, also cited by De Beatis. Since Costanza is Neapolitan, she should therefore be excluded by any chance as a possible sitter, despite the reference to Giuliano.
The eyes in younger version of the classic Gioconda: as such, the presence of the two initials, "L" and "S".
A very interesting element that can be seen in the eyes of the younger version is the presence of marks that resemble the letters L and S, also present in the Paris version. As Spanish researcher Dolores García Ruiz points out, these initials may refer to Da Vinci's notes in his Trattato della Pittura, when he would suggest that, for a better contemplation of a painting, we should focus on it only with the left eye: that is, abandon ("Lascia") the right one, for us to use the left one ("Sinistra").
Marks of the Renaissance. The composition and execution of the Isleworth painting, including the hands and face of the sitter, are manifestly Leonardesque, and these elements must certainly have been executed by him. Above all, the work and the main elements of the composition perfectly conform with the best of the master’s drawing style. Furthermore, the head, neck, and bases of the columns, indicate the brushstrokes of a left-handed artist like Da Vinci. The identical ethereal atmosphere seen in the Louvre version, is also recognizable here: the use of a simple sfumato, thus giving an aura of mystery to the composition. It is not an exaggeration to say that in no other case of composition’s copies (evidently, of collaborators or late followers), there is so much fidelity to the style and pictorial principles of master. By contrast, the simple treatment of the rest of the composition, such as the background landscape, seems to point to a the work of an assistant. Leonardo’s taste for details, such as his interest for natural themes, also seems to corroborate this thesis.
In addition, this version features Lisa between two Greek columns – a clearly Renaissance element – that is nonexistent in the Paris version save for a glimpse of the bases, but this feature is present in a sketch made in 1504 by Raffaello Sanzio, the same period in which Leonardo worked on the Earlier Mona Lisa. It is worth noting that recent examinations have demonstrated that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre never had its sides trimmed, though that procedure was commonplace at the time (and in subsequent centuries) in order to fit a picture into a previously prepared frame.
Furthermore, the “Isleworth” also follows the use of the “golden section”, as is the case in some other authenticated works of Leonardo (The Annunciation in the Uffizi in Florence, or the Mona Lisa in the Louvre). Widely used during the Renaissance, the golden section is a structural resource for creating mathematical compositions in art, first discovered in antiquity, which resists the principle of intersecting axes. Thus, the artist can, through subdivision of the image into several rectangles, produce a series of major and minor forms that would flow to infinity. This effect guides our vision spiral, resulting in a transcendent order in space, as it would in nature. Indeed, the observations and studies of nature (scientific logos) were pillars of important Renaissance achievements.
As far as the geometrical constructions of the Isleworth is concerned, the Goldblatt Thesis is of particular interest. The originator of this theory, Maurice H. Goldblatt, was an expert and art critic in Chicago in the beginning of the twentieth century who was instrumental in unmasking Mona Lisa fakes. His thesis served to validate the fact that only Leonardo’s originals had the mouth line of a feminine smile drawn in an arc of a circle, and when extended, would touch the external corner in one or both eyes. It also suggests, in the case of the heads of models (such as the Mona Lisa), that its outline is “the arc of another circle two times the diameter of the first circle”.
The Sfumato: 3D without glasses. Even though the technique known as sfumato was raised to a new level once it was combined with oil painting, Leonardo Da Vinci is not its creator, as is commonly thought. The Italian term means “gone up in smoke”, “smoky”, or “evaporated”, since that is what used to happen with brush marks on a painting: they virtually disappeared. Actually, the procedure has a distant origin, whose systematic application has been demonstrated for millennia, above all, in drawing and other dry techniques. Da Vinci, however, applied sfumato with a new glacis, a technique that consisted of the application of an oil layer mixed with a minimum amount of colored pigment over a white primer (do not confuse this technique with that one of his first works, executed before the development of this new version of “vitrification”).
From this, a thin layer was developed by reproducing ethereal colored tones. Such a procedure allows light, when passing through this “veil”, to penetrate into the bottom of the painting and then reflect back to the viewer. The multiple shade tones in the later works of the artist are actually due to successive applications of those layers. Showing each a specific pigmentation, one on top of the other, thus results in an effect of vibrant constancy.
This peculiar process appears only in the later works of the artist; quite possibly, the Gioconda of Louvre was the first instance in which it was used. Some evidence to this respect was confirmed by recent findings of the painting by Mady Elias of the French National Center for Scientific Research, and by the multispectral digitization tests performed by Pascal Cotte of Lumiere Technology (Cotte also conducted exams in Earlier Mona Lisa between 2010 and 2011, concluding that there is nothing that could indicate that it is not, indeed, from Leonardo da Vinci).
A device to suggest the illusion of volume so characteristic of the Italian Renaissance, the sfumato is used in post-medieval art with the purpose of creating a supernatural atmosphere. Through this, the composition was given a new aura in a world used to limited 2D imagery in painting, producing a type of representation that was more naturalistic. Hence, it is not hard to imagine the reactions of those who witnessed, the transition in this dramatic chapter of visual history, similar perhaps to the fascination of the public for 3D projections or I-Max in movies with the last generation technologies (1838 was the year of the invention of the stereoscope by the British physicist Charles Wheatstone, and 1922 saw the release of the first 3D movie in the History: The Power of Love, an American feature film directed by Nat G.Deverich).
Given Leonardo’s interest in optical and nature studies, and their multiple dimensional implications, this technique became an essential feature of his artistic production. It is also important to note here the comments by De Beatis, following the meeting with Leonardo and the Gioconda in 1517. Referring to the “Gioconda” as perfect and looking alive, the secretary describes the moment as a discovery of a fascinating and extraordinary image. For the public of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the impression must have been exactly this: a shocking realism. That level of sophistication in the execution of a painting, as initiated by Leonardo, was so movel that Watelet (and M.Robin) wrote in their Dictionnaire des Arts de Peinture (1790): “Alors le glacis est un moyen efficace de perfection pour l'art, et un remede aux défauts échappés dans la première couche”.
It is here that the two-dimensional plane goes into crisis, since, together with the use of the golden section, the figure of Lisa Gherardini in the pictorial composition dominates the scene. No doubt, this iconographic schematic model emerged from the desire of this Homo Universalis, Renaissance person, who sees in this form an integration of Nature and the Divine. It is well known that Da Vinci defended the concept that the Creator is manifest in every creation, inside or outside our senses, in things that we are capable of understanding. It is also where we realize the open path through the artist mind: we are inserted into this same Nature from where we are fruit.
However, in the case it is not obvious that the in Earlier Mona Lisa, the “electrical alchemy” of the atmosphere that would become a hallmark of Leonardo – the re-creation of an “unreal” universe (a “new reality”) outside our time-space – can be attributed to the master’s tendency not to finish what he started or, as already mentioned, to outsource the work to the hands of assistants.
Philosophical Implications. Another relevant Renaissance factor in the Earlier version is Leonardo’s keen interest in the search for an ideal of upper beauty (order): the question of the dual principle, or “opposites” in things. Which brings us back to Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.535-475 B.C.E.) and his thoughts on the cosmos and the “one”, the movement and harmony. Also, studies of Fibonacci and the golden ratio, including the strength of symmetrical balance, would be of singular importance in his compositions. Particularly with regards to the theme of youth and maturity in Da Vinci’s work, do we have some examples of how philosophical implications seduced his genius. A good example of how Da Vinci, as artist-designer, was seduced by diverse complexity that exists in everything, by the idea that each of us is a universe and that this universe is also each of us, rests at Oxford University, at Christ Church, in a drawing of the set Allegory on Milan Politics.
There, we have two mystical ladies using a “magical” mirror - according to a later interpretation, mirrors were used by French troops during François I’s invasion of Milan in 1499 -, in addition to some ancient symbols for alchemy and hermeticism (control of the natural elements), i.e., the presence of birds and serpentine elements: electricity and magnetism. One of the women in this Gestalt scheme is presented with a young face, and another, an old one. The theme of the transience of Man was a constant in the philosophies and the occult arts from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and continuing (more recently) to Romanticism and Expressionism. However, Christ Church also holds another drawing called Allegory of Pleasure and Pain from 1480, which sees two male figures – one young, and one old – that emanate from the same body. The idea here is to illustrate the need for pleasure to co-exist with pain, and vice versa: once again, a contrast of opposites.
Marks of the Renaissance. The composition and execution of the Isleworth painting, including the hands and face of the sitter, are manifestly Leonardesque, and these elements must certainly have been executed by him. Above all, the work and the main elements of the composition perfectly conform with the best of the master’s drawing style. Furthermore, the head, neck, and bases of the columns, indicate the brushstrokes of a left-handed artist like Da Vinci. The identical ethereal atmosphere seen in the Louvre version, is also recognizable here: the use of a simple sfumato, thus giving an aura of mystery to the composition. It is not an exaggeration to say that in no other case of composition’s copies (evidently, of collaborators or late followers), there is so much fidelity to the style and pictorial principles of master. By contrast, the simple treatment of the rest of the composition, such as the background landscape, seems to point to a the work of an assistant. Leonardo’s taste for details, such as his interest for natural themes, also seems to corroborate this thesis.
In addition, this version features Lisa between two Greek columns – a clearly Renaissance element – that is nonexistent in the Paris version save for a glimpse of the bases, but this feature is present in a sketch made in 1504 by Raffaello Sanzio, the same period in which Leonardo worked on the Earlier Mona Lisa. It is worth noting that recent examinations have demonstrated that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre never had its sides trimmed, though that procedure was commonplace at the time (and in subsequent centuries) in order to fit a picture into a previously prepared frame.
Furthermore, the “Isleworth” also follows the use of the “golden section”, as is the case in some other authenticated works of Leonardo (The Annunciation in the Uffizi in Florence, or the Mona Lisa in the Louvre). Widely used during the Renaissance, the golden section is a structural resource for creating mathematical compositions in art, first discovered in antiquity, which resists the principle of intersecting axes. Thus, the artist can, through subdivision of the image into several rectangles, produce a series of major and minor forms that would flow to infinity. This effect guides our vision spiral, resulting in a transcendent order in space, as it would in nature. Indeed, the observations and studies of nature (scientific logos) were pillars of important Renaissance achievements.
As far as the geometrical constructions of the Isleworth is concerned, the Goldblatt Thesis is of particular interest. The originator of this theory, Maurice H. Goldblatt, was an expert and art critic in Chicago in the beginning of the twentieth century who was instrumental in unmasking Mona Lisa fakes. His thesis served to validate the fact that only Leonardo’s originals had the mouth line of a feminine smile drawn in an arc of a circle, and when extended, would touch the external corner in one or both eyes. It also suggests, in the case of the heads of models (such as the Mona Lisa), that its outline is “the arc of another circle two times the diameter of the first circle”.
The Sfumato: 3D without glasses. Even though the technique known as sfumato was raised to a new level once it was combined with oil painting, Leonardo Da Vinci is not its creator, as is commonly thought. The Italian term means “gone up in smoke”, “smoky”, or “evaporated”, since that is what used to happen with brush marks on a painting: they virtually disappeared. Actually, the procedure has a distant origin, whose systematic application has been demonstrated for millennia, above all, in drawing and other dry techniques. Da Vinci, however, applied sfumato with a new glacis, a technique that consisted of the application of an oil layer mixed with a minimum amount of colored pigment over a white primer (do not confuse this technique with that one of his first works, executed before the development of this new version of “vitrification”).
From this, a thin layer was developed by reproducing ethereal colored tones. Such a procedure allows light, when passing through this “veil”, to penetrate into the bottom of the painting and then reflect back to the viewer. The multiple shade tones in the later works of the artist are actually due to successive applications of those layers. Showing each a specific pigmentation, one on top of the other, thus results in an effect of vibrant constancy.
This peculiar process appears only in the later works of the artist; quite possibly, the Gioconda of Louvre was the first instance in which it was used. Some evidence to this respect was confirmed by recent findings of the painting by Mady Elias of the French National Center for Scientific Research, and by the multispectral digitization tests performed by Pascal Cotte of Lumiere Technology (Cotte also conducted exams in Earlier Mona Lisa between 2010 and 2011, concluding that there is nothing that could indicate that it is not, indeed, from Leonardo da Vinci).
A device to suggest the illusion of volume so characteristic of the Italian Renaissance, the sfumato is used in post-medieval art with the purpose of creating a supernatural atmosphere. Through this, the composition was given a new aura in a world used to limited 2D imagery in painting, producing a type of representation that was more naturalistic. Hence, it is not hard to imagine the reactions of those who witnessed, the transition in this dramatic chapter of visual history, similar perhaps to the fascination of the public for 3D projections or I-Max in movies with the last generation technologies (1838 was the year of the invention of the stereoscope by the British physicist Charles Wheatstone, and 1922 saw the release of the first 3D movie in the History: The Power of Love, an American feature film directed by Nat G.Deverich).
Given Leonardo’s interest in optical and nature studies, and their multiple dimensional implications, this technique became an essential feature of his artistic production. It is also important to note here the comments by De Beatis, following the meeting with Leonardo and the Gioconda in 1517. Referring to the “Gioconda” as perfect and looking alive, the secretary describes the moment as a discovery of a fascinating and extraordinary image. For the public of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the impression must have been exactly this: a shocking realism. That level of sophistication in the execution of a painting, as initiated by Leonardo, was so movel that Watelet (and M.Robin) wrote in their Dictionnaire des Arts de Peinture (1790): “Alors le glacis est un moyen efficace de perfection pour l'art, et un remede aux défauts échappés dans la première couche”.
It is here that the two-dimensional plane goes into crisis, since, together with the use of the golden section, the figure of Lisa Gherardini in the pictorial composition dominates the scene. No doubt, this iconographic schematic model emerged from the desire of this Homo Universalis, Renaissance person, who sees in this form an integration of Nature and the Divine. It is well known that Da Vinci defended the concept that the Creator is manifest in every creation, inside or outside our senses, in things that we are capable of understanding. It is also where we realize the open path through the artist mind: we are inserted into this same Nature from where we are fruit.
However, in the case it is not obvious that the in Earlier Mona Lisa, the “electrical alchemy” of the atmosphere that would become a hallmark of Leonardo – the re-creation of an “unreal” universe (a “new reality”) outside our time-space – can be attributed to the master’s tendency not to finish what he started or, as already mentioned, to outsource the work to the hands of assistants.
Philosophical Implications. Another relevant Renaissance factor in the Earlier version is Leonardo’s keen interest in the search for an ideal of upper beauty (order): the question of the dual principle, or “opposites” in things. Which brings us back to Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.535-475 B.C.E.) and his thoughts on the cosmos and the “one”, the movement and harmony. Also, studies of Fibonacci and the golden ratio, including the strength of symmetrical balance, would be of singular importance in his compositions. Particularly with regards to the theme of youth and maturity in Da Vinci’s work, do we have some examples of how philosophical implications seduced his genius. A good example of how Da Vinci, as artist-designer, was seduced by diverse complexity that exists in everything, by the idea that each of us is a universe and that this universe is also each of us, rests at Oxford University, at Christ Church, in a drawing of the set Allegory on Milan Politics.
There, we have two mystical ladies using a “magical” mirror - according to a later interpretation, mirrors were used by French troops during François I’s invasion of Milan in 1499 -, in addition to some ancient symbols for alchemy and hermeticism (control of the natural elements), i.e., the presence of birds and serpentine elements: electricity and magnetism. One of the women in this Gestalt scheme is presented with a young face, and another, an old one. The theme of the transience of Man was a constant in the philosophies and the occult arts from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and continuing (more recently) to Romanticism and Expressionism. However, Christ Church also holds another drawing called Allegory of Pleasure and Pain from 1480, which sees two male figures – one young, and one old – that emanate from the same body. The idea here is to illustrate the need for pleasure to co-exist with pain, and vice versa: once again, a contrast of opposites.
The iconography of opposites: Peter's wrath and old age, and Judas' ugliness, in contrast to John's candor, youth and beauty in this Giampietrino's version for Leonardo's Last Supper - England’s Royal Academy of Arts, London.
One more case in which the same idea is manifest is the famous oil on wood painting of The Adoration of the Magi, today in the Uffizi in Florence, begun in 1481 and left unfinished from 1482. Here, we see a group of young people around a carob tree, in contrast to a group of seniors that surround the main scene. The theme is taken from the episode in the New Testament of the visitation by the Magi and their recognition of the divinity of Jesus. Over the centuries, a deeper understanding has opened up. The carob tree - and not “grasshoppers”, as an erroneous interpretation of Vulgata - suggests. and wild honey are described in the Bible as the diet of John the Baptist, patron of Florence patron, while living in the Judean deserts Hence, it is reasonable to assume that this tree became a spiritual symbol of the prophets in Renaissance Italy, and thus an object of veneration for the group of young men in the painting. This vision agrees with the growing interest in revisionist Gnosticism (including John the Baptist’s role in the Christian universe) that circulated in more lettered Italian circles and in which Leonardo – to judge by many of his drawings and notes – expressed a keen interest.
The idea that there is something archetypical in this idea propagated by Leonardo is provided by a sequence in the film Unbreakable (2000) by M. Night Shyamalan. In the plot, the character of Samuel L. Jackson, Elijah Price, suffers from a disease called Lobstein disease (or Type I osteogenesis imperfecta) that renders human bones extremely fragile and prone to fracture. According to the logic of the astute Price, there must be someone with the opposite pathology, a carrier of an unbreakable bone structure, and this is obviously the character of David Dunn, played by Bruce Willis. Then, ten years after this movie, generating headlines all over the world, came the announcement of a great triumph in modern science with a direct link to Heraclitus and Da Vinci: the creation in a laboratory of antimatter or the “God Particle” – an idea whose existence, in theory, had long been accepted in physics. Antimatter has an electrical charge of an opposing pole to “ordinary” matter, which, once joined to the respective matter, ends up destroying its opposite element. The discovery was made using a huge tunnel with a particle accelerator, located between France and Switzerland, called the Large Hadron Collider. It produced a trillionth of a gram of antimatter, which survived only a 16 hundredth of a second before annihilating its correspondent matter, as scientists had predicted.
This can serve as an analogy of our discussion of the two Mona Lisa portraits: the Earlier Mona Lisa is essentially as a younger counterpoint to the classic version in the Louvre, exemplifying Leonardo’s interest in the iconography of opposites. This analogy also clarifies the role of the earlier version to the later one: to provide a visible representation of a rejuvenated La Gioconda. Also, there is still an even stronger element: the cosmetic beauty of the lips of young Lisa Gherardini, which intensifies the direct relationship between the two versions – a younger woman versus an older one. At the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, using such provocative reddish hues in a mature woman would have been morally inappropriate. Indeed, an in-depth study of the original colors used in the Gioconda of the Louvre demonstrate that her lips were not much different than they look today. In fact, nor does Mona Velata in the Prado.
The Mona Lisa in Louvre can therefore only exist for Leonardo if there is also an opposite version, an equilibrium point: the Earlier Mona Lisa. That counterpoint allows him to reflect on the invisible reality, the bigger reality, in which the opposites orchestrate the movement of history and all of Creation.
Mary Magdalen by Giampietrino: Lisa Gherardini's face has always been the favorite model for Leonardo.
The youth of the supposedly most recent muse. The evidence in favor of the Isleworth version’s authenticity is therefore underscored by the strongest iconographical feature of Leonardo Da Vinci: the verisimilitude of the face of the historical Lisa Gherardini. No wonder, then, that it would become a signal reference point for identifying works by his followers. De Predis, Boltraffio, D’Oggiono, Salaino, Luini, and Giampietrino are some of the disciples that tried to use Lisa’s face in various portraits – including those of androgynous males – in all sorts of situations. Inevitably, this raises the question: since Leonardo himself painted not only the image of Lisa del Giocondo but also of other women, why is this one his hallmark? We already have his portraits of Ginevra de' Benci, of Cecilia Galerani in “Lady with an Ermine,” of Bianca Sforza in “La Bella Principessa,” of Lucrezia Crivelli in “La Belle Ferronière”, and of Isabella d’Este in the famous drawing, which are all strong examples of how Leonardo could endow a portrait with a life of its own, without the use of a single identifying mark. And while it is true that there is a certain minuteness on these cases, with Lisa Leonardo felt the the need to develop something of much greater visual power: a treatment so explicit that it could dispense with the use of tools that serve to immediately recognize or reveal the “hand” of the artist – such as the slender figures of El Greco, or the obese models of Botero. As a result of recent findings – including chronological data – the Earlier Mona Lisa emerges as the only viable portrait of Lisa del Giocondo from 1503 from. Other than following Leonardo’s geometry of harmony and beauty, this painting has every claim to be an aesthetic and social innovation, in terms of the role of women in Renaissance society, that would have attracted a lot of attention and curiosity. We will return to this point later on.
Of the opposing forces, the equilibrium. The Burlington Cartoon, also known as the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, (1499-1500) is a drawing of charcoal and white chalk on paper, now at the National Gallery of London. It reveals an apocryphal scene: the young Mary is seated with her mature mother. Both characters have a strong physical resemblance to Lisa Gherardini as both a young woman (the Earlier Mona Lisa), and a mature woman (the Louvre’s version), respectively. Hence, the Earlier Mona Lisa, the counterpoint to the classic version of Paris, adds to the iconographic work of the opposites created by Leonardo, and its correspondence perceived in relation to Louvre is more than clear: general aspects of the portrait itself reveal us the evident representation of an of a rejuvenated La Gioconda.
The Louvre museum also has a painting by Leonardo that would eventually emerge from the London drawing: the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. There, the parallelism of facial traits of Jesus’ grandmother with those of the Earlier Mona Lisa does not leave any doubt with the idea that a single sitter served as the model for both portraits. However, due to the change in angle and inclination of the Virgin’s head in the Louvre painting, it is not that simple to discover Mary’s identity – and its resemblance to the cartoon. Indeed, no document has even been found about the identity of the model for this figure. What we may assume, following the concept of a harmony of the opposites, is that Mary may be a rejuvenated version of Saint Anne, perhaps modeled on the historical character of the “young” Lisa Gherardini. Note that the figures of Jesus' grandmother and mother, in the way they are intertwined, it turns into a shapeless mass, where it's difficult to define whom each member belongs to: the right arm in both is a good example. That's one more reinforcement for the notion of the unity of opposites. In a way, there's in popular imaginary the thinking that an offspring can be understood as the “younger” portrayal of his/her parents... Perhaps, even, Nature understands the issue of recycling life necessarily in these terms.
Of the opposing forces, the equilibrium. The Burlington Cartoon, also known as the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, (1499-1500) is a drawing of charcoal and white chalk on paper, now at the National Gallery of London. It reveals an apocryphal scene: the young Mary is seated with her mature mother. Both characters have a strong physical resemblance to Lisa Gherardini as both a young woman (the Earlier Mona Lisa), and a mature woman (the Louvre’s version), respectively. Hence, the Earlier Mona Lisa, the counterpoint to the classic version of Paris, adds to the iconographic work of the opposites created by Leonardo, and its correspondence perceived in relation to Louvre is more than clear: general aspects of the portrait itself reveal us the evident representation of an of a rejuvenated La Gioconda.
The Louvre museum also has a painting by Leonardo that would eventually emerge from the London drawing: the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. There, the parallelism of facial traits of Jesus’ grandmother with those of the Earlier Mona Lisa does not leave any doubt with the idea that a single sitter served as the model for both portraits. However, due to the change in angle and inclination of the Virgin’s head in the Louvre painting, it is not that simple to discover Mary’s identity – and its resemblance to the cartoon. Indeed, no document has even been found about the identity of the model for this figure. What we may assume, following the concept of a harmony of the opposites, is that Mary may be a rejuvenated version of Saint Anne, perhaps modeled on the historical character of the “young” Lisa Gherardini. Note that the figures of Jesus' grandmother and mother, in the way they are intertwined, it turns into a shapeless mass, where it's difficult to define whom each member belongs to: the right arm in both is a good example. That's one more reinforcement for the notion of the unity of opposites. In a way, there's in popular imaginary the thinking that an offspring can be understood as the “younger” portrayal of his/her parents... Perhaps, even, Nature understands the issue of recycling life necessarily in these terms.
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne by Leonardo: whom each member belongs to? - Louvre Museum, Paris.
The Heir. The attempt to identify the young Mary in the London drawing could prompt a comparison with to Lisa's portrait as depicted in the Earlier Mona Lisa. Yet, the angle at which the characters’ heads are shown, both in the painting and the cartoon due the needs of the composition, make such a comparison more difficult. We should also remember that the Burlington Cartoon was probably draw in 1499 or 1500, whereas the Earlier Mona Lisa followed three years later. But not everything is lost: it is through the work of one of Leonardo’s students that an answer might be available to us. That pupil is Francesco Melzi. Unfortunately, not much is known about this great friend and assistant of the elderly Leonardo, but the trust he would place on this young man of Milanese origin allowed Melzi to preserve much of his paintings, drawings, notebooks – including anatomic studies - and sketches, besides a rich legacy of writings. If today we know much about Da Vinci’s life, that surely is due to Melzi, who provided the biographers of his time with all the information he had.
This devoted assistant and last Leonardo’s last companion painted the Vertumnus and Pomona around 1520, which today is in Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. The subject is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Pomona was the goddess of fruit, while Vertumnus was the god of transformation, who could change himself into whatever he wanted. One day, frustrated by Pomona’s constant indifference, Vertumnus decided to disguise himself as an old woman in order to seduce her. In this work by Melzi, we once again encounter the iconography of the opposites, in that Vertumnus is shown as an elderly figure, in contrast to Pomona, who is young and beautiful. According to Heraclitus, we may conclude that Vertumnus’ appeal as a youth would not have been decisive if he had not assumed the essence of a much older person, exuding the wisdom that only comes with maturity and experience. In Melzi’s painting, the model for is the Virgin Mary of Leonardo’s Burlington Cartoon. In that same year, another famous pupil, Bernardino Luini, also took advantage of Leonardo’s cartoons for his Holy Family (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana of Milan).
In this period (between 1517 and 1521), Melzi once again used the same contrast of opposites in his painting of Flora, goddess of Spring. Also known as “Columbina”, a reference to the flower held by the character, this Flora is poised between death and resurrection: the columbine in her left hand and her bare breast represent fertility; and the anemones in her lap suggest death and resurrection, possibly injecting a Christian theme in this pagan allegory. There are two versions of this painting: one at Hermitage, in S. Petersburg, and another at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Another version exhibits some affinity to the original Isleworth Mona Lisa. Here, Melzi developed a version of Flora in a slightly different pose that owes much to this Gioconda, apart from a minor difference in arrangements and clothing, but with an evident facial resemblance between both. This variation is seen at Borghese Gallery, Roma, while, in 1525, Luini would execute a Ritratto di Donna, inspired by this last Flora of Melzi. About the Flora of Hermitage, there is acurious episode related to an appearing of a wax bust, attributed to Da Vinci, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. That work resembled another work of a Roman school of the eightieth century, which was part of Pontow collection (Mannheim), with the difference that the first appears to be much older. It was found in an antiquary of Murray Marx, London, in 1907 by a German art scientist, Dr. Max J. Friedländer, who was convinced of its value due to quality– indicating to be a work from antiquity. The path from there to glory was short: it was acquired by the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum (Berlin State Museums), and authenticated by the renowned director Wilhelm von Bode. Later on, it was found to be a fraud executed by sculptor Richard Kockl Lucas. The Times had already decided to expose the sculpture to the world that same year. Even being a fake, the bust – as confirmed posteriorly by Lucas’ son, already with 80 years -, had as inspiration the young Flora of Melzi. The arms are in the same position (though partially mutilated) in both sculptures (and inclination) in each one of three versions (S. Petersburg, Rome, and Mannheim) - in fact, these gestures make them a Leonardesque model. And, a comparison of these sculptures’ faces clearly show us the influence of the young Lisa del Giocondo as the model. By the way, considering the age of infant Jesus in a cartoon, the Virgin Mary would be about eighteen years.
One more example of Francesco Melzi’s dependence on the younger Lisa in the creation of his characters is Pluto and Persephone. Though it is very likely that this painting was executed by one of his followers, the figure of Persephone is another adaptation of Columbina figure. The painting was auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York in 2007.
These examples show the enduring influence of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, even though the influence may not be explicit at first glance. In all of these works, the characters are of young women, rather than mature figures. In fact, the majority of works by the Leonardeschi works are inspired by the younger version of Gioconda, rather than the aged and stained version of Louvre. Perhaps this would finally explain the meaning of the often heard expression of the Mona Lisa as “la donna più bella del mondo”...
Conclusion. The famous smile of the Mona Lisa in Paris has gained an almost sacred character, witness the endless “pilgrimages” to the Louvre. Her figure has become synonymous with the greatness that the human race is capable of, as John F. Kennedy said during the portrait’s tour of the United States in 1963. As such, this feature would appear to supplant all its other achievements, enchanting the viewer with its solid pase in the face of eternity: she is sensitivity and solidity personified.
But the ‘Earlier Version’is not that much different: the sovereign pose and enchanting smile are also evident in this graceful variation, exemplifying the ideal portrait of humankind at the dawn of Modernity. The countenance of this young woman captures the essence of humanity with all her majesty, challenging whoever looks at her. It shows how art can serve as a great ally of nature, since our species is also the work of God's art, unique, His masterpiece. It marks the moment that humankind acquires that unique restlessness and speculation of the modern age—or what the theologian Paul Tillich calls its “last unquietness”, testifying to its transforming vocation.
Professor Átila Soares da Costa Filho (Opening photo: Martial Trezzini/EPA)
English version: The Mona Lisa Foundation / Átila Soares da Costa Filho
English version: The Mona Lisa Foundation / Átila Soares da Costa Filho
Bibliographical References
Átila Soares da Costa Filho: “A Jovem Mona Lisa". Rio de Janeiro: Multifoco, 2013.
Átila Soares da Costa Filho: “Leonardo e o Sudário". Rio de Janeiro: Multifoco, 2016.
Giorgio Vasari. "Vidas de pintores, escultores y arquitectos ilustres". Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1945.
Jean Delumeau. "A história do medo no Ocidente (1300-1800): uma cidade sitiada". São Paulo: Cia.das Letras, 1989.
Jean-Pierre Vernant: “As origens do pensamento grego”. São Paulo: Difel, 2002.
María Dolores García Ruiz: "Las claves de la Mona Lisa - El legado oculto de Da Vinci": Publicação independente, 2017.
Mario Pomilio, Angela Ottino della Chiesa: “L’opera completa di Leonardo pittore” – Classici dell’arte, vol.12. Milano: Rizzoli, 1978.
Peter Burke (Ed.). "A escrita da história: novas perspectivas". São Paulo: UNESP, 1992.
Stanley Feldman (et al.): "Mona Lisa - Leonardo’s Earlier Version". Zurich: The Mona Lisa Foundation Press, 2012.
Umberto Eco: “Arte e beleza na estética medieval”. Rio de Janeiro: Globo, 1989.
Umberto Eco: “Storia della brutezza”. Milano: Bompiani, 2007.