The Mona Lisa was not painted freehand but Leonardo first drew a preparatory sketch in charcoal. The discovery in a study
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himWe return to talk about the charm and mystery that revolves around the famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, also known as the Mona Lisa. This time, thanks to a high-tech study, some scholars have managed to find a drawing at the base of the painting that reveals the painting technique used by Leonardo.
The Mona Lisa is an oil painting made by Leonardo da Vinci around 1503-1504, left unfinished, which contributes even more to infusing this work with that aura of mystery that has characterized it for centuries.
The Mona Lisa was never completed by Leonardo da Vinci, that's why
Several studies have tried several times to uncover the secrets hidden in this painting. Now some multispectral analysis, conducted for 15 years from French researcher Pascal Cotte with the collaboration of Lionel Simonot they led to an important discovery published in the “Journal of Cultural Heritage“.
Thanks to over 1.650 photographs taken on the painting with Lumiere Technology's high-resolution multispectral camera since 2004, it was possible to identify a sort of preparatory sketch, a drawing that Leonardo made before painting the Mona Lisa.
In practice, thanks to the images based on an infrared system capable of detecting the light reflected on 13 different wavelengths, evidence of the existence of a charcoal drawing hidden under the actual painting was found on the table.
Scholars therefore hypothesize that Leonardo used the dusting technique that is the one that allows you to transfer a sketch made on cardboard to the table thanks to the fact of making holes along the outline of the image on which coal is then "dusted".
Traces of this technique were found notably under the Mona Lisa's hairline and on the edge of the right hand.
The study speculates that the dusting technique may have been used by Leonardo to create multiple versions of the painting, including the one kept in the Prado museum in Madrid (the first version of the Mona Lisa). The possibility is therefore rekindled that there is a drawing on paper of the Mona Lisa that has not yet been found or has been lost.
“These discoveries increase the mystery of the creation of the Mona Lisa and make us understand that it is a very long 'creative act', which took place in several phases,” said Professor Cotte.
Fonti: Journal of Cultural Heritage / Art Magazine
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