“Unlocking the Enigma: Discover the Hidden Mysteries Behind the Mona Lisa’s Smile”
The sfumato technique allowed Leonardo to merge the human figure with the landscape behind her, which was a dramatic and varied landscape, rather unusual for portrait art at the time. It depicts rocks, roads, hills and a river, fading from earthly tones into a dreamy distance, rendered in ethereal shades of blue. However dream-like, this backdrop was likely inspired by the countryside of the Republic of Florence, Leonardo’s main place of work in the early 1500s.
Going back to the technique, this device is at the basis of the enigmatic gaze and fascinating smile of the Mona Lisa. On the eyes and their apparent ability to follow you around the room, it turns out this technique lends itself to this.
So how does this work? It turns out for even a moderately skilled artist, this “ubiquitous gaze” effect isn’t a difficult thing to achieve. In a nutshell, all you need is a little illusion of depth, so the person depicted appearing at least somewhat 3D despite being on a 2D canvas, and to direct the gaze of the eyes such that they would be looking at someone standing right in front of the picture.
So what exactly is going on here in our brains that then makes it seem like the eyes follow you even if you move away from being front and center? As demonstrated in 2004 by a team of researchers from Ohio State University, as you move to the side, the “near” and “far” points of the 2D image don’t really change. These near and far points are defined as visible points that, if the image was 3-dimensional, would appear nearest and furthest away from the viewer at a given angle. Summarising their findings, co-author of the paper James Todd had the following to say:
