Mona Lisa - A Woman of Many Faces
Abraham Tamir, Department of Chemical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Fax: +972-7-647-2916. E-mail: atamir@bgumail.bgu.ac.il

Leonardo da Vinci (1459-1519), consummate genius, artist, sculptor, architect, urban planner, inventor, scientist, writer, musician - not exactly a slouch in creative or intellectual pursuits - was probably, the first to utilize the close interrelationship between Art & Science, the major objective of this series of articles.
His famous Mona Lisa painted around 1503-1506, the epitome of art, and her many faces on the back page demonstrate how art can be used as a means to present subjects in psychological sciences - doctrine of the soul. The first subject is related to what Ernst Gombrich, one of the major art historians, said (Vardi, 1996): "Artists don't paint what they see but they see what they paint". This conception reflects what psychologists claim, that art is a reflection of the inner structures and perceptions of the mind of the artist and that the final creation of the artist, being an object he really saw in front of him or only in his mind, is affected by his thoughts, intellectual background, emotions, and imagination. Dadaist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), as demonstrated on the back page, drew Mona Lisa provocatively with a beard and mustache, transforming the symbol of femininity to a man. He also named the picture L.H.O.O.Q., which, pronounced letter by letter in French means "She has got a hot ass". Fernando Botero's Mona Lisa, characterizes his monumental figurative style where he produced a velvety texture that underscores the sensuous character of the model's volumetric distortion. Oliver Solga's Mona Lisa is interesting in that her original enigmatic smile was modified here by her creator. And the Mona to the left is just a photograph of a beautiful woman which reminds so much the original Mona Lisa. Regarding the other images, it is certain that Mona Lisa was not sitting in front of the artists while they were painting; there is even the question (discussed below) who actually did Leonardo paint.
The second subject is related to the psychology of the cognition of vision by the brain. Look at the complete face of Mona Lisa on the top right. Her eyes seem to follow you as you move in different directions; she returns your gaze. This phenomenon is attributed to the fact that the brain has been accustomed to accept the front of the face and the eyes as one totality in that if the front face of the Mona Lisa is directed towards you, it includes automatically also her eyes, independent to where they are directed to. Now look at the lower part where only the eyes of Mona Lisa are exposed. You will find that her eyes are directed always to the right, and therefore in this case she looks back at you only when you stand to the right of the picture. Did you realize this before?
In all above we have used art to demonstrate two topics in psychological sciences. The "other side of the coin" demonstrates how art is created via science - in the present case by computer art - one of the many possible tools. Look at the astounding "metamorphosis" Leo to Mona created by Dr. Lillian Schwartz (1995), a pioneer in computer graphics and an artist with formal education in nursing. Such an artwork could only have been realized with a computer that, according to Lillian, is a polymorph of tools and electronic databases, a part of the natural evolution of an artist's tools, which can reproduce an image of a famous Renaissance painting and record that image to video, film, facsimile, a plotter, or a printer.
Now we come to the myth of Mona Lisa, the woman dressed in the Florentine fashion of her day and seated in a visionary, mountainous landscape, which is a remarkable instance of Leonardo's sfumato technique of soft, heavily shaded modeling. The Mona Lisa's enigmatic expression, which seems both alluring and aloof, has given the portrait universal fame although no one is sure who exactly is the lady in the picture. Here are a few speculations. According to Vasari, biographer of da Vinci, the subject is a young Florentine woman, Monna (or Mona) Lisa, who in 1495 married the well-known figure, Francesco del Giocondo, and thus came to be known as "La Gioconda''. According to another speculation, Leonardo recorded in his notebooks the records of model sittings; but nowhere can be found any records of the Mona Lisa model sitting. Why is that? Who posed for him? Dr. Lillian Schwartz (1995) suggests that Leonardo painted himself, and she supports her contention in the following way. She split the faces of the Mona Lisa and Leonardo's self-portrait down the middle, adjusting the sizes and juxtaposing them so that one side of Mona Lisa's face matches Leonardo's. The two halves form an arresting portrait of a remarkable split personality - the union of a beautiful woman and a bearded man. This is demonstrated by "Monardo" - bottom right in the picture in the back page. Another "theory" is the following one. In the book by Solo (1994) we are informed that psychoanalytical critics have suggested that Leonardo may have experienced an "Oedipus anxiety" caused by an unresolved sexual fantasy involving his mother, which was manifested in his portrait of a woman. Here, again, the proof is Lillian's "metamorphosis" of Leo to Mona, from a forbidding Leonardo transformation into a smiling Mona Lisa when age lines and beard are subtracted and the corners of his lips are turned up. And finally, in her intriguing historical novel, Rina de' Firenze (1996) claims that the source of inspiration for Leonardo was none other than Caterina, his mother who was a girl of noble blood, whose original name was "Lisa". She had an illegitimate child born in 1452 to a well-to-do notary, Piero da Vinci, a child that became the greatest artist, sculptor, architect, and engineer of the Renaissance. His mother adds that when Leonardo entered Verrocchio's studio in Florence, he started drawing her face time and time again, promising her to turn it into the most famous, mysterious painting in the world, which so happened.
Speaking so much about Mona Lisa, undoubtedly, raises the question what her character might have been. Such an analysis has been made by Lailan Young (1993) by applying "face reading" resulting the following character: liar, stubborn, gifted abstract thinker with an IQ above average, greedy, unreliable "friend", would punish her enemy by any means, a sneak and finally, needing at least nine hours' sleep each night. All above, indeed, demonstrates the many faces of Mona Lisa.