I agree - 99% persperation and all that? But that remaining 1% - boy does it make a difference :-).
12. Wait to dry.
I can accept he is a man of his times and in that context, is a genius but maybe I was not being clear, I was looking back at his paintings, rather than trying to get into the head of someone contemporary viewing his work.
What Raphael has caught above all is the classical power and strength of the ce, and the way it is sculpted by shadows. His portrait has the same shade along the nose and eye sockets that Leonardos does.
Total estimated drying times: between 7 weeks and 7 months.
The painting would have been finished in several different layers - weeks, if not months apart. At the (probably one and only) sitting with the subject, a detailed, well shadeddrawingwould have been done, with notes on eye colour, hair colour etc.
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The only modern technique which guarantees (within limits) representational accuracy is painting from projected photos - or derivations thereof, which I dont like (stylistically speaking) either.
i said ,no clue, i left it behind somewhere..So i do not suggest that above Pupils where coco pops, however it is possible that Giacomo and Pasquale were koe koe.
What willyourskin look like after 500 years? It would have looked a lot brighter and fresher 500 years ago. You get the real vibrancy of skin by contrasting yellows and reds (or creams and pinks once the white has been added) and then the life when the vermillion is added to lips and cheeks, etc. Not to mention the eyes, which form a vital part of the picture in terms of contrast and bringing the skin to life. Mona Lisa earned her reputation a long time ago - when stuff like this was still common knowledge. Now shes a celebrity but few really know why anymore.
Which Mona Lisa imitator do you most trust Leonardos pupil, or Raphael?,
Heres a secret of the Guild - you only need English red, yellow ochre, vermillion, black and white in order to paint skin. The Vermillion (with white) for lips, the redness on noses, cheeks, chins and ears.
Leonardos pupil almost certainly worked from Leonardos drawing, and when you do that, you can make a hundred copies and every one will look different, mainly because the outlines of key features (eyes, nose, centre of mouth, chin, line of cheeks etc) can vary by up to a brush-width once the drawing is fixed in paint. These differences of just a few millimetres (which may become exaggerated as the painting progresses), together with slight variations in the way the shading is done, can give many slightly different looks to a painting made from exactly the same drawing, regardless of the skill of the artist. Even if Leonardo himself made several copies from his own drawing, they would look different - some better, some worse.
I sometimes wonder if the practice of teaching art history using projected slides makes people expect paintings to be brighter than they were intended to be.
Thanks :-)
Im a great n of your work.
Well, maybe but there is other evidence to consider. Leonardos Mona Lisa has been studied in depth at the Louvre, as you might expect.Various scans taken there reveal an earlier state in which Lisa apparently did not smile. This impression of an unsmiling Mona Lisa is also seen in an early imitation by a very great artist: none other than Raphael.
Leonardo picked his pupils for their looks, not their talent. He delighted in Salais curly locks, says Vasari, who also attests to the beauty of Melzi, even in old age. They were not gifted artists. A copy that developed alongside the Mona Lisa is obviously scinating, but it does not necessarily revolutionise understandings of this painting. Raphael saw more, because he was a great artist.
Because he was :-). Underlying the deceptively process Ive mentioned above, would have been years and years of practice - and thats just to be able to make a decent drawing.
Slightly odd to refer to leonardos pupils, Giampetrino, Luini and Boltraffio among tgem, as not talented. Not all of Leonardos pupils, or Michelangelos either, were picked for their looks or salacious personality. But anyway, this painting isnt good enough for any of the good ones (presumably the basis for the Prado attribution) so the point stands.
News: The real Mona Lisa?
The inadequacies of the copyists observations show in the proportion of the ce, the right eye being a little to close to the nose, the nose being a fraction too long and the ce lacking the underlying bone structure that is convincingly apparent in the Mona Lisa. The characteristics of structure and form are clearly defined in the Raphael portrait, although the womans ce is of different proportion and her individual features of different shape.
From this distance, they all look like mannequins. I dont know where the idea comes from that Leonardo was a genius at painting people. Maybe in his own time he was considered such a genius but from this distance, they are what they are, stuffed corpses. If it wasnt for his other, more interesting work, I doubt we would be so much fuss of him as a painter.
Slightly odd to refer to leonardos pupils, Giampetrino, Luini and Boltraffio among them, as not talented.
Dear Jonathan,
Titian used a different method to the Flemish derived one of Leonardo - (called the Venetian technique). As simply as possible, the Venetians did more of their initial drawing straight onto canvas (though no less skilled), painted flat areas of colour, let it dry for up t
Once youve got your drawing, you just dont need the sitter, except, perhaps, at the very end, to check hair colour, eyes, etc. but I doubt Leonardo even needed to do this. Especially since it is suggested that he didnt actually get around to finishing the painting for ten years.
Why nonsense? In a subsequent post here you explain how Leonardos procedure could lead to inaccuracies when transferring the drawing to paint. If he had referred back to the sitter when painting then such inaccuracies could have been corrected.
As for the realism, well you have a point there - Leonardos drawing would have been influenced by classical sculpture and what he learned from his own master.
16. Wait to dry.
copy of the structure of Leonardos portrait with a different sitters ce.
The Prado now believes its copy may be the work of one of Leonardos two vourite pupils, eitherGiacomo SalaiorFrancesco Melzi. It was, they think, painted alongside the original and so is deeply revealing about what the painting looked like when it was new. Vasari said it startled with its joy and verisimilitude two qualities that have been mystified by Leonardos endless work on the painting. Does the Prado copy show Lisa as she really was?
2. (Back in the studio) Transfer drawing to painting suce by pricking the outlines with a pin and pouncing with coloured chalk - about an hour.
There are advantages to the modern techniques though - because the old master techniques are so dependent upon lighting conditions (on a grey day your entire painting can look grey, on a sunny one, it can look absurdly bright) the solid paint of alla prima techniques can give you a better average for all conditions. And of course, theyre quicker and easier to produce.
The inadequacies of the copyists observations show in the proportion of the ce, the right eye being a little to close to the nose, the nose being a fraction too long and the ce lacking the underlying bone structure that is convincingly apparent in the Mona Lisa. The characteristics of structure and form are clearly defined in the Raphael portrait, although the womans ce is of different proportion and her individual features of different shape.
14. Wait to dry.
The early copy of the Mona Lisa discovered at the Prado may reveal less about Leonardos original than existing evidence. Photograph: Jose Baztan Lacasa/Ho/EPA
His women never look like individuals to me but stylised females, their ces are always seem too similar to be individuals.
a tattoo and a Job?
Boltraffios Artemisiaanticipates the best of Titians portraiture by a generation and is r more arresting and impressive than either the Mona Lisa or Raphaels uncharacteristically waxy and stilted Maddalena Doni.
9. Apply an all-over yellow ochre glaze (well thinned, transparent layer) - ten minutes.
Musicians (and poets)wereoften mentioned as being present in the studios of artists. They were thought to help the artist get in the mood - in touch with the muses. A lot of artists still listen to music while they work for exactly the same reasons (though weve replaced the muses with other explanations).
17. Make changes / corrections (none needed; I reckon Leonardo got it right first time).
So his pupil will have transferred the samedrawingto his painting suce and then followed the same painting procedure - he would never have had to know what Mona Lisa actually looked like.
And....you could paint so st,i replied Supradyn darling just lots of SupradynThen she asked me.What have you done with your Mona Lisa who had a short haircut
11. Apply white to areas of highest highlights and smooth it toward the shadows (not touching shadow areas) so that it is solid in the highlights, transparent in the intermediate areas and non-existent in the areas of deepest shadow - half an hour.
The sfumato isnt added, its laid down in the underpainting (put the paint on with one brush, then spread it around with a thick, soft, dry one) and accentuated when the white is added (in almost the reverse process; starting in the light and working toward the shadows - with your dry brush). Its a development on the Flemish technique (of painting only in totally transparent layers) in which, instead of allowing the light areas to show through from the white suce, solid white and velaturas are added to the highlights. Nothing masks anything - except the highest highlights and details like the line in the centre of the lips.
I like your stuffed corpses comment, because at one stage of this type of painting (before the final pinks are applied) they really do look like corpses. Even in the 19th century, one French writer likened the process to putting make-up on the dead. :-)
3. Fix outlines in paint - half an hour.
The Prado version makes its subject look more straightforward and less dreamlike. But why take a pupils evidence over that of Raphael?
10. Wait to dry.
Applying the paint to achieve skin tones was a standard procedure (Leonardo mentions it himself in the collection of notes which have become known as his treatise on painting).
The pupils painting (whichever pupil it might have been) appears to be a direct copy of the Mona Lisa made at a stage prior to the addition of the distinctive sfumato which masks the underlying expression.
15. Finishing touches - eyes, hair, etc. (est. one hour at most)
Using the old ways of painting, you could choose from three umbrellamethodsand a whole variety oftechniques. However they try to dress it up, whether they know it or not (and most dont), most modern portraitists are usingnomethod and justonetechnique - alla prima. I bought a ridiculous book which was supposed to demonstrate old master painting techniques a couple of years ago, in which the (contemporary) artist had basically split an alla prima painting into different sittings - and assumed that this was how the old masters worked.
You could substitute a pale yellow ochre for a stronger one if you were painting mens skin or something like burnt Sienna for the English red, which is why you often see mily portraits in which the skin of the men is noticeably more yellow / red (darker) than the womens.
cleaned, conserved or drastically revised according to modern taste. I get a little disturbed when I see all these pinky scrubbed ces on newly cleleonardo da vinci biographyaned paintings and wonder what may have been lost in the search for light and colour.
4. Wait for outlines to dry (anywhere between a week and a month, depending on the time of year).
Contrary to the impression you may haveformed from todays news stories, this is not the most amazing recent discovery about the Mona Lisa. That came in 2008, when a researcher in the university library of Heidelberg found notes written in a copy of Ciceros letters in Florence from October 1503 that actually sayLeonardo is working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. Unless anyone overturns that documentary proof, this has settled all debate about the true identity and date of Leonardos portrait at least, the date he started it. While the document makes it pretty certain he began Lisas picture in Florence in 1503 (fitting, as it happens, with the account written byVasariin 1550), Leonardo never handed over thepaintingto her husband, Francesco. Instead, he worked on it for years to come.
You rightly say that Maddalena is an imitation of the Mona Lisa. But as this
How much does thenewly cleaned copy of the Mona Lisain the Prado, now being touted as a magical key toLeonardo da Vincis mous portrait, actually tell us about the way the original was created?
If the pupils were competent artists, if they were looking at the model, they should tell more about the Mona Lisa than Raphael. He was looking at someone else and only following a manner of Leonardo.
A contemporaneous copy discovered at the Prado may tell us less about the Mona Lisa than an early likeness by Raphael
To suggest that Raphael based his portrait of Maddalena Doni on the Mona Lisa is perfectly reasonable. To suggest that the expression on the sour and petulant ce of Maddalena is an indication of the expression on the ce of some original underlying version of the Mona Lisa is ridiculous.
Because he was :-). Underlying the deceptively process Ive mentioned above, would have been years and years of practice - and thats just to be able to make a decent drawing. Then you look at the painting; its not just the rendering of the skin which tells you what a great painter he was as the ensemble of the details - the eyes especially; very hard to get them looking like they belong to the rest of the ce (sounds odd I know, but try it). Every stage reeks of practice. For example, draw a ce on a piece of canvas and then try to shade it with one single colour, using only one wet and one dry brush - its not easy. All in all, it is a master piece; the sum of years of learning and practice.
As I said, the methodology described is deceptively - there are any number of ways it could be played around with in expert hands but basically, yes, there wouldnt have been an awful lot of difference between Rembrandt and the techniques used by Leonardo, except that Rembrandt did a lot more work in the final stages of his paintings - like Hals; more alla prima in the solid areas.
Total estimated working time: 6 hrs 10 minutes (maximum).
The Prado now believes its copy may be the work of one of Leonardos two vourite pupils, either Giacomo Salai or Francesco Melzi. It was, they think, painted alongside the original
Its Boltraffios Portrait of a Young Woman as Artemisia (1494), which has a soft and tender convincing naturalism that neither Leonardo or Raphael were capable of.
Because he was :-). Underlying the deceptively process Ive mentioned above, would have been years and years of practice - and thats just to be able to make a decent drawing.
That is not genius but hard work.</blockquote>
5. Do underpainting in verdigris (a greenish mix of black and yellow ochre) - about an hour. The underpainting when finished, will look like a monochrome csimile of the drawing.
Today i met coincidentally an ex collega Student,while i was grabbing energy from a bassin fulll of coral Strings and other semi precious stones among Pearls.She was enquiring of if a Vaas was that old, and how she could make sure that it was an Original.Under the huge fur Chapeau, i overheard a miliar voice.Though
video shows that its actually more than that, something closer to a precise
The Mona Lisa may well be more representative of a waxwork than the actual Lisas complexion if the painting methodology used was so formulaic.
News:Prado says pupil painted remarkable portrait alongside Leonardo da Vinci
6. Wait for underpainting to dry (week to a month)
The painting you linked to is interesting though, because it shows the state of the underpainting, which would have been pretty similar.
I wonder when theyre going to discover that the real Mona Lisa has the words THIS IS A FAKE written in black marker underneath the paint.
Think of a portraitist like Nattier - incredibly stylised to the point of virtual caricature - yet vastly in demand by the aristo women of his time. Ive seen a portrait of Nattiers in the Chateau de Chenonceau which looks like one of those little cluedo pieces - I bet the sitter still loved it though.
His women never look like individuals to me but stylised females, their ces are always seem too similar to be individuals.
P.S. the irony of that painting, is that at one stage, the entire thing would have looked just like that under painting of mona lisa on the easel!
Why nonsense? In a subsequent post here you explain how Leonardos procedure could lead to inaccuracies when transferring the drawing to paint. If he had referred back to the sitter when painting then such inaccuracies could have been corrected.
8. Wait to dry.
13. Apply Vermillion to lips, nose, cheeks, ears, chin - in a thin glaze (except for the lips). Vermillion is relatively fugitive, which is why it has mostly ded to a dark reddish brown on Leonardos painting. Half an hour.
Fascinating- your description seeems to bring the painting process to life.
In about 1506,Raphaelportrayed a wealthy Florentine woman,Maddalena Doni, in the pose of Leonardos painting. That someone should have been depicted in this way shows how mous the Mona Lisa had already become in Florence. Maddalena and her husband were art collectors, so they were probably in on the joke; she has the same twist of her body in her chair, the same crossed hands. All she lacks is a smile. Why? It might be a differentiation of character heres an unsmiling patrician woman to contrast with Leonardos smiling merchants wife or maybe it means that Leonardo added the smile to an originally glum Mona Lisa as he endlessly reworked the painting.
To suggest that Raphael based his portrait of Maddalena Doni on the Mona Lisa is perfectly reasonable. To suggest that the expression on the sour and petulant ce of Maddalena is an indication of the expression on the ce of some original underlying version of the Mona Lisa is ridiculous.
I do love the way Raphael has utilised the mous image to created a likeness of a pretentious person who demanded a Michelangelo as a wedding present and who wears a pearl as big as Liz Taylors and three rings, one of which does not fit her t fingers.
I rather like this romanticised version of Leonardo at work- complete with musicians to keep the sitter entertained. Though from what you say, it wasnt like that at all.
Everything is dependent upon taste but overall, modern portraits are a dumbed-down, simplified version of how Leonardo would have worked and are no less prone to inaccuracy.
1. Drawing with the sitter - about an hour.
I rather like this romanticised version of Leonardo at work- complete with musicians to keep the sitter entertained. Though from what you say, it wasnt like that at all.
True - I see a lot of his master in Leonardos work. But its always been true that people have wanted to be shionably depicted - and if possible, enhanced.
As for the realism, well you have a point there - Leonardos drawing would have been influenced by classical sculpture and what he learned from his own master. He would have used what he learned to even out perceived deficiencies in the sitter - as portraitists continued to do for centuries after (though what constituted a deficiency in the mind of the artist varied with changing shions).
Even though it is a portrait of another person that eerily transposes aspects of Leonardos painting, Raphaels work is in some respects closer to the appearance of the Mona Lisa today than the Prado version is. As such, it supports the idea that theMona Lisa today is true to Leonardos intentions and so must never be cleaned. The Prado version also mimics the shadows that sculpt the Mona Lisas beauty, but here they are less striking, less grand and deep than in the Raphael or the Leonardo as it survives in the Louvre.
If you had your portrait painted, would you be more concerned about minor representational inaccuracies or more concerned that the portrait made you look (feasibly) handsome? If you are of the former persuasion, then you are a rarity :-).
The Prado painting is not a work done from the live model by a pupil seated beside Leonardo. If it was, then the angle would differ, and all the details, such as the folds in the garment, would reflect a different moment in time and a different persons observation.
7. Apply touches of English red to deeply shaded areas - half an hour.
Indeed Jackwak, r from being untalented, some of Leonardos pupils easily outshone their master. For instance, by r the best portrait in the National Gallerys Leonardo exhibition isnt by Leonardo at all.
i decided not to mingle in the conversation,till She approached me.Are you....
Standing alongside him -tcha, do people think its like a photography shoot? Portraitists have only done this direct from life nonsense from start to finish or in several sittings since the impressionists - before that, the main sitting was for the drawing and after that, perhaps another session or two for finishing touches.
The colours he used for skin didnt help either (though you could argue that the heights of unrealism wouldnt be reached until the 18th century and all that burning, pure vermillion). In the 19th century, a more natural, alive looking skin was achieved by some artists by substituting the vermillion with a no longer existing red pigment (closest thing Ive found today is permanent red) to make the pinks.
I say nonsense for many reasons. First of all, the modern portrait technique is just as prone to inaccuracies (more so, in my opinion because a drawing is somewhat easier to get right - less to concentrate on in one go, etc). Second, modern portraits are vastly inferior in terms of the complexity of the techniques used and the finished result (depending on preferences of course) and thirdly, once youve got your accurate drawing (from life) you have much more control and flexibility over each of the subsequent stages than you have with modern techniques.
Im shocked that experts at the Prado would suggest that Leonardos pupil may have been standing alongside him - I cant believe they really said that; has something been lost in journalistic translation? Or is there no-one left in the entire world of art who actually knows how painters used to paint?
The way these colours were applied was so standard, that you only needed a well shaded drawing to work from, you didnt need the sitter.
I think the old methods produced ntastic results because you have areas of the portrait which are transparent, some which are veiled and some which are solid. As you can imagine, when the light hits the painting, it penetrates the transparent paint and is reflected back from the white suce, less so in the veiled areas and is reflected from the paint suce of the solid highlights. When correctly lit, such portraits can literally glow and look frighteningly three dimensional. Painting using modern methods tends to produce muddy looking, all solid skin tones which dont glow at all and are very flat by comparison.
Portraitists have only done this direct from life nonsense ...
But generally, I agree with you. I hate the fuss made about the smile - either she really was smiling and the shadows in Leonardos underpainting didnt depict it well enough, so the upturned line in the centrWhich Mona Lisa imitator do you most trust Leonardos pupil, or Raphael?e of her lips looks incongruous or she wasnt smiling and Leonardo got that line a bit thick at that point which made it look sort of like a smile - either way, its only relevance to me is that it shows that Leonardo da Vinci was once a normal, mortal human being who did the same things and made the same kind of errors as ordinary mortals do today.
Im with Cromwell - warts and all. The Mona Lisa may well be more representative of a waxwork than the actual Lisas complexion if the painting methodology used was so formulaic. Modern technique does not have to be alla prima - Freud could hardly be accused of that - and it can allow time for the artist to get to know the subject, reconsider, find new insights. But I do find it hard to believe all of Titians and Rembrandts were made as you suggest.
Just to give you an idea of how idiotic it is to suggest that Leonardo and his pupil may have been standing side by side painting Mona Lisa, heres the procedure he would have used, with attendant time-spans (excluding the background scenery, which I suspect was added to the portrait drawing at a later stage).
Applying the paint to achieve skin tones was a standard procedure (Leonardo mentions it himself in the collection of notes which have become known as his treatise on painting).
