At the first sight of DaVinci’s masterpiece Mona Lisa, the seven-year-old Jacques Frank has become fascinated about it. For decades, he has been trying to unveil such a myth that how such a perfect painting had been drawn by DaVinci. Recently, at the exhibition of DaVinci’s works in Florence,Italy,he confidently exclaimed, “I have already found the answer.”
To explain this from the technical angle
It is estimated that Mona Lisa is created by DaVinci on an Italian poplar in his later life, approximately from 1503 to 1506. For centuries, numerous scientists and art historians has made all sorts of researches on this five-hundred- year painting, in order to unveil the myth of this painting as well as its smile.
Frank, an advisor of Davinci research center in California, America, exclaims that none has tried to explain the genuine painting skill of Davinci. He further explains that what puzzles him the most is that how DaVinci controlled lights and shadows so harmoniously in his paintings. He also points out, “Mona Lisa is beyond everyone’s understanding ability.”
DaVinci has ever coined a new word “sfumato“, which is the combination of mix and fumigate in Italian. He used such a word to describe his drawing method and exclaimed that such a method could make the paintings appear to have neither the lines nor the boundaries, but exist in a smoked way, or seem to be out of the focal plane.
Although DaVinci has left substantial written records for many works and inventions of his, he has never really explained how he sfumatoed paintings to make them similar with the cubist effects. Frank explains, “if you want to know sfumato, you should firstly understand how lights and shadows worked well with each other.”
Similar with sandwich making
By using a series of canvas reproduction of Mona Lisa’s eyes, Frank tries to prove that DaVinci has drawn a draft before creating Mona Lisa. Afterwards, he used a very light translucent paint to make lines softer. Then he polished the details by using a brush to draw small points. Finally, he applied another layer of light colors upon it. Frank explains that the whole process is very similar with sandwich making.
Frank thinks that some parts of Mona Lisa’s face have been rendered at least in 30 layers and every layer is unbelievably thin. He says, “In Mona Lisa, there is an unusual coherence. Here, we can find that DaVinci must have spent many years in drawing this painting.”
In order to prove his theory, Frank has also exhibited his two pictures drawn by imitating DaVinci’s works with this drawing skill. Surprisingly, after these two paintings being exposed under the X-ray, we can find that they share striking similarities with DaVinci’s original.
