New research into the painted layers of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting de Mona Lisawith a highly detailed digital infrared and ultraviolet camera, reveals that on canvas in 1503 Da Vinci also painted his military engineering dream: a plan to drain the Arno River, thus destroying the enemy of the city-state of Florence, Pisa, from fresh water.
To the left of Mona Lisa’s shoulder is that twisting, reclaimed riverbed, according to French engineer Pascal Cotte. He made in 2004 at the Louvre in Paris, where the Mona Lisa hangs, with his own special digital camera, 1,650 photos from coat after coat of paint. In this way, he and his scientific team can follow the construction of Da Vinci’s famous canvas layer by layer.
Changes in portrait
In Da Vinci’s hometown of Vinci in Tuscany, Cotte held a press conference where he presented his latest findings and insights. He had previously shown that Da Vinci had applied his design drawing to the canvas by applying charcoal powder to the canvas through holes in the drawing.
With his research, Cotte also visualized the changes that Da Vinci made to the female portrait over the years. According to him, in 1501 Da Vinci initially set the Mona Lisa as a Madonna painting, but in 1503 reworked it into a portrait of the wealthy Lisa Gherardini, who gave the canvas its name. And in 1513 he is said to have reworked the portrait of a woman at the request of a new client, in order to give his son a picture of his mother, who had died at birth. Because she didn’t have a forehead as high as Lisa, Da Vinci scratched off paint there, according to Cotte.
move river
Da Vinci was busy with many things at once; in addition to being a painter, he was also an architect, inventor and military engineer. With the latter he was in the Mona Lisa-year 1503 also busy. Together with the later author of the book The PrinceNiccoló Machiavelli, who was in Florence’s war cabinet, devised a military plan to divert and canalize the Arno River. In such a way that Pisa ran out of water and the Florentines could go straight to the sea. Da Vinci not only designed excavators, basins and locks for this ambitious war project, he was also sent to investigate the fortress on the steep mountains of Verruca, from which you could see the river and the plain of Pisa. Da Vinci sketched those steep rocks there – and you can also see them to the left of Mona Lisa, above the reclaimed riverbed.
Cotte discovered in the lower layers a watchtower on the river, which Da Vinci has painted over. According to the researcher, this also refers to Da Vinci’s river diversion plan. Because after many fives and sixs, Florence started it, in 1504, while Da Vinci was already elsewhere. A similar watchtower was demolished during the work. During a storm, a weir broke through and the river washed away the canal section that had been constructed, resulting in deaths. The plans were never completed after that.
Also read: Rijksmuseum discovers unknown sketch under ‘The Night Watch’
Smile explained
Da Vinci recognizably painted the rocky outcrops of Verruca next to Mona Lisa. In combination with the drained river, Da Vinci also painted his engineer’s dream, according to Cotte, that a river can be diverted through human intervention. If that theory is true, wrote the sheet The Economistexplains that perhaps the enigmatic satisfied smile of the Mona Lisa.
Water fascinated Da Vinci all his life, as witnessed by his sketches and writings. It may also explain why Da Vinci’s never-delivered Mona Lisathus possibly a water theme, as one of the few paintings to take to the French court in 1516, where he became a painter and engineer to the French king, and died in 1519 at the age of 67.
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