Mona Lisa's Smile

Mona Lisa’s Smile

When you think of a beautiful smile, who comes to mind? Someone famous, like Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise? Someone closer to home, your mother or father, your spouse or your child? One of the most famous smiles in history is that of Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo Di Vinci. 

Leo (as a fellow Italian I feel free to be familiar) started painting Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine merchant in 1503 and continued to refine his painting until his death sixteen years later. Leo was a slow worker and often didn’t finish projects he started, but this one painting held his attention. Leo was more than a painter, he studied anatomy, engineering, mathematics, optics, warfare, literature, poetry and whatever struck him as interesting. His investigations into human anatomy helped him create Mona’s haunting smile.

Walter Isaacson, in his book, Leonardo Di Vinci, details Leo’s interest in bones, nerves, organs, muscles, and skin. Leo dissected animals and cadavers to unravel their mysteries. He was especially interested in lips: “The muscles which move the lips are more numerous in man than in any other animal.” In his journals, he includes detailed diagrams showing the many positions the lips can take “One will always find as many muscles as there are positions of the lips” he writes. He concludes that the positions of the lips convey the emotions behind them. 

This is what makes Mona’s smile so memorable. Leo shows us the inner emotion behind the smile but with a veil, a mystery, because Leo realized that, as Isaacson writes, “we can never fully know another person’s true emotions.” 

The lips do more than smile. They frown, they pout, they purse, they pucker. Each position of the lips is a signal for the emotion behind it. Our lips telegraph our thoughts and feelings, yet our signal readings may be off. Some mystery lurks — hidden in the minds and hearts behind the smile. 

Mona Lisa’s smile reveals little of her inner self. Is she happy, amused, pensive, reflecting, or planning? Does she think of someone special or of the artist painting her into immortality? We will never know. But we remember her and her smile. Isaacson writes that the painting, “became more than a portrait of an individual. It became universal, a distillation of Leonardo’s accumulated wisdom about the outward manifestations of our inner lives and about our connections between ourselves and our world.” Mona’s smile connects her world with ours. Our smiles connect us with others. 

Smiles may mask our true inner-selves, but as with Da Vinci’s masterpiece, it is the observer who benefits. Every beautiful smile adds light to the world. Mona Lisa’s smile inspired centuries of artists and poets. Your beautiful smile inspires also. Use it often. Make your smile as lovely a memory as Mona Lisa’s. 

(All quotations from Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, 2017)