Mona Lisa Mania

In manuscript A, da Vinci says, When you are drawing from nature, the light should be from the north, so that it may vary.

Leonardo was among the first to introduce atmospheric perspective into his landscape backgrounds. He also established the use of "single-vanishing point perspective," with the lines of the mountain peaks, winding roads and rivers converging on a single point behind Lisa's head.

Using the techniques of sfumato and chiaroscuro, the landscape becomes ethereal and idealized, though the bridge is often identified as the Buriano, near Arezzo.
(see photo) The background appears timeless, infinite with atmospheric light that gives the impression of being changeable.

In his notebooks there are many references to his fascination with water, fires, floods and apocalyptic visions of the end of the world. He executed drawings of Arno floods, Florentine fires and storms near Swiss the Alps combining prophetic visions with catastrophes. As Roy McMullen states, "Both the fiery and the watery visions of the end of things, however can be reasonably added to the naturalistic-panorama mode, the rock wilderness symbolism and the geological philosophizing as part of the network of inspiration that lay behind the Mona Lisa background." The barren uneven background in the Mona Lisa is as dispassionate as the sitter.

In The Hidden Leonardo, Marco Rosci says, "It is interesting to recall the youthful drawing of 1473 and to compare that view of the Arno valley, functional yet remarkably evocative in the use of atmospheric perspective, with some of the landscape drawings at Windsor, especially the one showing a storm over a valley, above which loom high mountains lit by the sun. Considering these drawings and the related background landscapes of the St. Anne and Mona Lisa, one is struck yet again by the inseparability of Leonardo's interests and activities. Drawing and painting are here allied to topography and eventually to studies of natural and meteorological phenomena."

Geography as art-from The Mind of The Renaissance- Alessandro Vezzosi . "His map of Imola and physical map of Tuscany, Emilia and Romaga are among Leonardo's most significant sheets, brilliant examples of the interaction between the art of cartography and the science of geography. These are two attempts at synthesis, representing the sum of the cartographic technology of the time-all that was known of terrain, geometry, cosmology, anatomy and the aesthetics. Leonardo presented a primal and timeless vision of the earth's surface that raised topography to the level of poetry. These bird's-eye geography's illustrate the dominion of learning and of strategic and intellectual power, the realm ruled by perspectives both mental and symbolic."

In Leonardo's painting, The Virgin and The Child with Saint Anne, Vezzosi further notes, "Its ethereal, metaphysical landscape is surely Leonardo's last work in this vein. The exquisitely detailed gravel at the figures' feet displays Leonardo's advanced aesthetic and pictorial ideas, in which poetic artifice merges easily with an accurate, naturalistic account of geology".

This affinity between Mona Lisa and the background works like a call and response in music. The vagueness of the intention and the uncertainty of the sitter echoes the ambiguous and mysterious location of the background. The pyramidal composition echoes the mountains. The landscape is barren echoing the lack of adornment (no jewelry) on Lisa. The landscape and Mona Lisa both with smoky sfumato ambiguities are a kind of Tabula Rasa, left open to interpretation, adding an aura of mystery to the whole of the painting.

	Photo of Buriano Bridge.
	Detail of bridge in the background.
	Detail of gravel in Leonardo's The Virgin and The Child with Saint Ann
	Left background detail.
	Right background detail.