home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
Text File | 1995-12-24 | 1.4 KB | 35 lines | [TEXT/ttxt] |
- Leo and Mona
-
- Juxtaposed images of the Mona Lisa and Leonardo
- da Vinci reveal the unity of a single
- face.When Leonardo's self-poitrait is flipped and scaled,
- the lips, brows, cheekbones and shape of the head
- match those of the Mona Lisa. The similarities suggest
- that Leonardo, who worked on the Mana Lisa in the
- absence of his original sitter, used himself as a model
- and infused the painting with his own features. The
- original sitter may have been lsabella, Duchess of Ara-
- gon. Leonardo had made a cartoon, or preparatory
- drawing, of her in the same composition as the Mona
- Lisa. (The Renaissance historian Vasari, on the basis of
- rumors, assumed that the model was Mona Lisa Gherar-
- dini; hence the painting's name.) The cartoon, however,
- does not match up with the finished painting.
- Despite a supererficial similarity, the eyes, nose and
- jaws are different. The cartoon of
- lsabella does match a sketch that x-ray analysis has re-
- vealed to lie underneath the Mona Lisa. In a computer-
- ized transmutation known as a Morph, from
- "metamorphosis," a forbidding Leonardo transforms
- into a smiling Mona Lisa when lines and beard are
- subtracted and the corners of his lips are turned up. The
- strong brows and positions of the eyes do not change.
-
- from: "The Art Historian's Computer"
- by Lillian Schwartz
- Scientific American
- April, 1995, pp. 106-111.
- Hypercard adaptation by Conrad Weiler
- cweiler@orednet.org
-
-