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| Mona Lisa |
Mona Lisa or ( La Joconde in French; La Gioconda in Italian ) art by Leonardo da Vinci and one of the finest examples of Renaissance painting and it is probably also the best known example of sfumato (is one of the four canonical painting modes of the Renaissance; use of fine shading), a painting technique partly responsible for her enigmatic smile. A painting presents a woman in half-body portrait, which has as a backdrop a distant landscape and which has been acclaimed as the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world. In dimensions, it is 77 cm × 53 cm (30 in × 21 in)and it is an oil rendition of Da Vinci using poplar wood. It is told that Da Vinci started the painting in 1503 and took about four years to complete, although art history books suppose that Da Vinci spent a few more years to perfect its creation. There are around 6 million people from all over the world every year who visit the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France (one of the world's largest museums and a historic monument) to see Leonardo da Vinci’s famous portrait, Mona Lisa. Who’s Mona Lisa? The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo (15 June 1479 – 15 July 1542 ), the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany in Italy. Her name was given to Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. Little is known about Lisa's life. Born in Florence and married in her teens to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official, she was mother to five children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life. Lisa outlived her husband, who was considerably her senior. Centuries after Lisa's death, Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting and took on a life separate from Lisa, the woman. Speculation by scholars and hobbyists made the work of art a globally recognized icon and an object of commercialization. In 2005, Lisa was definitively identified as the model for the Mona Lisa.
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| Leonardo da Vinci |
Who is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci? (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) he was an Italian polymath, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. He has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci states that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time. Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualized flying machines, a vehicle, concentrated, an adding machine, and the double hull, also outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. He made important discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had no direct influence on later science.
Leonardo da Vinci was renowned as the inventive artistic genius long before he painted the Mona Lisa, and his fame drew wide attention to his art. His reputation as a genius was well- deserved. Leonardo lived his motto, “He is a poor pupil who does not surpass his masters” and is said to have surpassed not only his masters, but all his contemporaries in each of the many arts and disciplines to which he committed himself. He researched anatomy to perfect his art. His dissected animal and human cadavers to learn the muscle and skeletal structure and made copious drawings and notes. He studied perspective, the sky and atmosphere, and the way light falls in curved surfaces and, based on these studies, refined his painting methods. Although only a few paintings survive today, his work is still admired by experts. The Mona Lisa was one of his last paintings, all his skills is evident. Did you know that the original painting has a minor spot of damage near her left elbow. In 1956, for not known purpose, a man named Ugo Ungaza threw a stone at the painting and therefore creating the small damage. Mona Lisa artwork started to be so common because partially it created news when it was stolen from Louvre Museum in Paris by an employee in 1911 - in broad daylight. However it was recovered after about two years.
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| Musée du Louvre in Paris, France |
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| A minor spot of damage near her left elbow (1956) |
Vincent Willem van Gogh
was a Post-Impressionist painter of Dutch origin whose work—notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color—had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. He began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches, and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still life’s, portraits as well as paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.
This is the famous artwork of Vincent, “The Starry Night”. It is an oil on canvas painting. Painted in June, 1889, it depicts the view (with the notable addition of an idealized village) from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. It is Van Gogh's best-known painting and one of the most recognized monuments in the history of Western culture. Just as most people can tell you that Vincent Van Gogh was a famous Impressionist artist who painted Starry Night, many people also have heard about how Van Gogh was "crazy" and suffered with mental health issues throughout his life. The story of Van Gogh cutting off his ear after a fight with his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin, is one of the most popular anecdotes in art history, and supposedly occurred in winter 1888, the year before the painting of Starry Night and not long before Van Gogh's death in 1890. Keeping with his reputation as a crazy artist, Van Gogh was committed to a mental health asylum in Arles after the ear incident with Gauguin. History has it that Van Gogh painted Starry Night while in the mental hospital, and that the landscape in the painting is the view Van Gogh had from his window.
(Source)
Book:
Readings from World Literatures. Great Books Publishing 2013
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