Leonardo da Vinci, probably the most important Renaissance artist, is widely
recognized as the most famous artist of all time. He’s the genius behind the
iconic Mona Lisa painting masterpiece, after all. It was painted sometime between
1503 and 1519 when Leonardo was living in Florence, and it now hangs in
the Louvre Museum, in Paris, where it remained an object of pilgrimage in the 21st
century. The sitter’s mysterious smile and her unproven identity have made the
painting a source of ongoing investigation and fascination. Da Vinci also created a
background with aerial views and a beautiful landscape but muted from the vibrant
lightness of the subject’s face and hands. The technique Da Vinci used in executing
the painting left behind no visible brush marks, something that was said to make any
master painter lose heart. It is truly a masterpiece.
The Mona Lisa is an oil painting, with a cottonwood panel as the surface. It is
unusual in that most paintings are commissioned as oil on canvas, but the
cottonwood panel is part of what has attributed to the fame of the painting. Because
of the medium used for the image, the Mona Lisa has survived for six centuries
without ever having been restored–a trait very unusual when considering the time
period of the piece.
Among his famous masterpieces, there are also the Last Supper and The Lady with
an Ermine. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and
his Vitruvian Man drawing is regarded as a cultural icon as well.
Even nowadays, his works are not fully understood and he still serves as inspiration
for many, many aspiring artists.
Beyond painting, although he had no formal academic training, da Vinci was also a
scientist and inventor and he created plenty of drawings of the human body and
many modern technologies found in the world today. Leonardo’s paintings and
preparatory drawings together with his notebooks, which contain sketches, scientific
diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting compose a contribution to later
generations of artists.