Did the Naperville artist solve the Mona Lisa mystery?

Local artist Natalia Dagenhart participated in the "Fabulous Fakes" art show in Naperville and shared her experience making a copy of Mona Lisa. (Article from 02.03.16)

I was always fascinated by history and art, especially art that was painted centuries ago. Walking through museums and famous art galleries, I always stare into the faces and eyes of the characters on the portraits, wondering what those people were like when they were alive, what they were thinking about, what worried them and how it would have felt living during their era. An Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci left a big mystery behind, and it has been raising questions for more than five hundred years already. The secret of his Mona Lisa and her intriguing smile is still not solved. What does her enigmatic smile mean? – I asked myself peering into her eyes. She just smiled back at me – calm, charming and mysterious.

I thought a lot about her, and when the Naperville Art League announced the theme of the upcoming art show – Fabulous Fakes – I knew what I would be painting this time. It would be my enigmatic friend who lived more than five hundred years ago – Mona Lisa. As many other people in the world, I wanted to try to solve her mystery and to understand how Leonardo Da Vinci created a piece of art that has been intriguing the whole world for so many years. As we all know, Mona Lisa is considered to be "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, and the most parodied work of art in the world".

Many sources state that the wife of Francesco del Giocondo named Lisa Gherardini was the model for this famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci. It was painted in oil on a white lombardy poplar panel around 1503-1506 and possibly has been refined up to the year of 1517. For some period of time it was in the possession of King Francis I of France. Since 1797, the painting has been permanently located at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Lisa Gherardini is said to have been born in 1479 in Florence and was married to a man who was much older than her. She died long before the painting became famous and the world started wondering about her smile.

These facts are interesting, but they still don't explain the enigmatic smile of Mona Lisa. What was she smiling about? Why? How has Leonardo da Vinci achieved such an uncertain facial expression on Mona Lisa's face? The more I looked at it, the more I saw in her facial expression – from heaviness and virginity to viciousness and occultness.

I started investigating and learned that Leonardo da Vinci painted Mona Lisa using his self-invented Sfumato technique. It is based on the application of up to forty layers of extremely thin glaze thought to have been smeared on with his fingers. He mixed that glaze with different pigments, which created the slight blurring and shadows around the mouth that gave the Mona Lisa her barely noticeable smile that seems to disappear when looked at directly. Interestingly, different areas of the face have different layers of glaze and paint. The scientists say that the drying of the glaze takes months; therefore those effects have taken years to achieve.

A famous architect, painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari, often called the "father of art history", wrote in his book "The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects" about Leonardo da Vinci: "while he was painting Mona Lisa, who was a very beautiful woman, he employed singers and musicians or jesters to keep her full of merriment and so chase away the melancholy that painters usually give to portraits. As a result, in this painting of Leonardo's there was a smile so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find that it was as alive as the original."

So, here I was trying to copy such a great piece of art. What should I start with? I didn't have years to wait on the glaze; I didn't know where to take different pigments. So, I decided just to use my intuition, and after deep and detailed studying of the portrait I took my brushes, my acrylic paints and was ready to start.

First, I printed out the image of Mona Lisa and divided it into squares. Then I did the same on my 16 by 20 inch canvas. (I know it should have been done on a board, but I am used to canvas. Why not?) After that, I outlined her face and the background with a pencil. As a self-taught artist, I do everything using my intuition without using techniques that are usually taught at the art classes. It's good and bad; bad because maybe I am missing some basic techniques; good because when I paint I follow only my heart and don't feel that I should be limited by any rules or dogmas.

Anyway, after working with a pencil I started painting with acrylics. And here miracles started to happen. The more I worked on the face, the more I had to redo and fix it. At the end, I had to reshape her face and her entire head (although originally, with a pencil, it looked perfect) and to redo the whole portrait. Because the head came out bigger than I planned, I had to reposition her entire body. It took me a week to work on this piece, and every day I kept fixing her face. Maybe I didn't put forty layers of paint and glaze on her eyes and mouth as Leonardo da Vinci did, but definitely I put dozens of strokes in those areas.

I kept working on her face and noticed that her facial expression kept changing. Without big changes, she either smiled at me or all of a sudden looked seriously and almost angrily. What do you want? – I asked her in frustration but kept painting. I would stay until 3 a.m. in the morning almost every day improving her eyes and lips. Calm, confident and jolly she looked at me. Why am I doing it? – I asked myself but couldn't stop painting. I had to finish it.

I thought about Mona Lisa all the time during that week and the more I was thinking, the more questions I had. Her lips are not positioned too high in the sides and don't show any teeth, however, the smile is obvious. Also, her eyes are not really wide open but still she doesn't have a squinting eye expression as usually people have when they smile. How to show all this without that special technique created by Leonardo da Vinci? Only God knows how to do that, – I thought, and asked God to help me.

When the due date came, I was ready. I found a nice frame that fits well my "Fabulous Fake" Mona Lisa and brought it to the Naperville Art League. Did I solve the Mona Lisa's mystery? I don't know, and I am not the one to judge it. If you want to make your own opinion about it, please come to the "Fabulous Fakes" art show at the Naperville Art League. You will see there a lot of beautiful pieces of art created by local artists who worked really hard making those "fabulous fakes". Enjoy them, and if you have a moment, please help me to understand whether I came at least one step closer to solving the secret of Mona Lisa!

The "Fabulous Fakes" art show will run from February 3 through February 27 at the Naperville Art League located at 508 N Center Street in Naperville. For more information, please visit http://www.napervilleartleague.com/

Natalia Dagenhart