Michelangelo and Da Vinci

Running head: MICHELANGELO AND DA VINCI

Michelangelo and Da Vinci

Michelangelo and Da Vinci

I found two works, one from Michelangelo and one from Da Vinci, which I will be comparing. The first work is one of Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous paintings, the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is an oil painting on poplar wood. The person in the painting is unknown but it is thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The Mona Lisa is painted in a realistic scale. It has a fullness of volume typically seen in a sculpture in the round. It is believed to have been created between 1503 and 1506. Da Vinci's Mona Lisa "is the earliest Italian portrait to focus so clearly on the sitter in a half length portrait". (Cecile, ) The middle of the painting is in warm colors. It appears inviting as, "men live in this space". (Cecile, ) The Mona Lisa is lifelike. So much so that, one could almost imagine the pulse beats in the hollow of the neck and the eyes following the viewers' movements. Da Vinci used a method to create the eyes that left them glossy and moist, looking lifelike. He used sfmuto to blend and shade the contours from his light to dark work and to soften the image, to make it more lifelike. (Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2007) He also used chiaroscuro "to use light and shadow as they define three dimensional objects". (Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2007)

The second piece that I found was a work by Michelangelo called, The Slave. This is a marble sculpture in the round, approximately life size, created between 1513 and 1515. This sculpture was originally undertaken as a project for the tomb of Julius II, a pope in 1505. (Laruelle, ) Michelangelo, for unknown reasons, left off work on this sculpture, known as, The Rebellious Slave. The rough marble of the base with hammer and chisel marks still visible, contrast with the smooth finish of the body. There are questions to an iconographical theme as, "there are few clues, beyond the figure of a monkey which is roughed out beside the" other