Research/Reading the Masters/Ⅳ Those Who Stood Before Nature
Ⅳ — Those Who Stood Before Nature · No. 24 / 50
Leonardo da Vinci — Mona Lisa
레오나르도 다빈치 — 〈모나리자〉
c. 1503–1519. Oil on poplar panel, 77 × 53 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
A woman sits with her hands folded. At her lips rests an expression that may or may not be a smile.
Leonardo’s sfumato dissolves contour. The edges of eyes and mouth soften, preventing the face from being fixed in a single instant. The smile appears and disappears according to the viewer’s position and state of mind.
The landscape behind her is equally unstable. Roads, water, mountains, and mist connect like different layers of time. The portrait is both one person’s likeness and a scene in which human and nature permeate one another.
Byun Shi-Ji gradually erased faces. Instead of expression, he left a bent back, a staff, and a body meeting the wind. Leonardo concealed time within a subtle face; Byun removed the face and allowed time to inhabit the whole posture.
One speaks through expression, the other through stance. Neither confines the human being to a single outward moment.
The smile has not yet been decided.
The interpretation is the author’s. No unverified statement has been presented as the artist’s own words.