MONA LISA & THE „DA VINCI CODE“
INTRODUCTION
A side interest in the lab is to use what we know about vision to understand some of the discoveries artists have made about how we see.
The separate processing of color and form information has a parallel in artists‘ idea that color and luminance play very different roles in art (Livingstone, Vision and Art, Abrams Press, 2002).
The elusive quality of the Mona Lisa’s smile can be explained by the fact that her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies, and so is seen best by your peripheral vision (Science, 290, 1299). These three images show her face filtered to show selectively lowest (left) low (middle) and high (right) spatial frequencies.
So when you look at her eyes or the background, you see a smile like the one on the left, or in the middle, and you think she is smiling. But when you look directly at her mouth, it looks more like the panel on the right, and her smile seems to vanish. The fact that the degree of her smile varies so much with gaze angle makes her expression dynamic, and the fact that her smile vanishes when you look directly at it, makes it seem elusive.
Here’s a link to a NOVA program on the Mona Lisa that features this idea, starting around minute 38.
https://www.pbs.org/video/decoding-da-vinci-93ssvo/
Here is a podcast about science and art
https://podtail.com/podcast/neuwritewest/neurotalk-special-episode-on-s…
We have been looking at depth perception in artists, because poor depth perception might be an asset in a profession where the goal is to flatten a 3-D scene onto a canvas.
We found evidence that a surprisingly large number of talented artists, including Rembrandt, might be stereoblind (Livingstone and Conway, 2004). In the etching to the left you can see that Rembrandt portrayed himself as strabismic (with misaligned eyes).
If this were the case in only one or two of his self portraits, or if he also showed other subjects with misaligned eyes, we wouldn’t think anything of it, but Rembrandt most of the time portrays himself, but not other subjects, as wall-eyed, and the outward deviating eye is reversed in his paintings compared with his etchings (think about it!)
Can you understand (and share) the buzz around Mona Lisa?
What is „da Vinci´s code“ and which of the two can break it: art or science? Explain in writing.
Can you give more examples of painters chasing the ungraspable and hiding it in their works?
Mona Lisa´s smile has aroused fascination, excitement and curiosity throughout centuries.
It looks, however, that her „secret“ is not merely about her smile.
This project has tried to give a hint about the mystery coded in the painting of the greatest European master* who was ingeniously able to perceive and capture the spirit of the supernatural.
1. Leonardo da Vinci
There are few other artists from European descent that enjoy as much acclaim as Leonardo da Vinci. He is considered by many to be the “Father of the Renaissance” and his works have vaunted him into a status that no other artist can really compare.
Da Vinci was born in Florence, Italy in 1452 when the Italian Renaissance period was just beginning to gain more widely-recognized fame across Europe and other parts of the world.
He is remembered as a prolific painter, as well as a sculptor and inventor. Many of his works are considered to be among the greatest masterpieces ever produced.
During his youth, he was educated by Andrea del Verrocchio, a renowned sculptor and painter who lived in Florence at the time.
One of da Vinci’s most famous works is the Mona Lisa, which is considered by many art historians and critics to be one of the greatest paintings of all time. Another notable work is The Last Supper, which is among the most iconic Christian paintings from history.
