Bust of "Mona Lisa" based on my own CG sketch
by
Shunya Susuki
2007.1.20
(1) What I discovered when I produced this sculpture this time (detailed explanation) 

* There is no contradiction between the sculpture and the picture, as if the painting was a photograph.
Therefore the model of Mona Lisa exists.

* The painting was drawn by the use of orthodox perspective, the viewpoint being the center of the painting.

* When I calculate the distance between Mona Lisa and da Vinci by the following ways with focusing my attention on Mona Lisa's hands looking larger than normal ones, it becomes one meter.

(Note) If the hand (at point B) which is 20cm from Mona Lisa’s face (point A) looks 1.25 times as large as the actual size, the distance X between point A and viewpoint C becomes as follows.


      L:(X?20)=1.25L:X
           L・X=1.25L(X?20)
          0.25X=25            (cf.)When the distance between A and B is 15cm
             X=100cm                     X=75cm         
(2) What can be assumed from the above.

* Because the position of the eyes of da Vinci was extremely low, and distance between Leonardo da Vinci was extremely near to Mona Lisa, he drew the model in his childhood.

* We can assume that Mona Lisa was drawn based on the original picture which he drew precisely from a short distance.


Therefore, I can suppose that situation between da Vinci and Mona Lisa is like below. In other words, Mona Lisa was da Vinci's mother. He had drawn her when he was still a child, and he painted Mona Lisa later, when he was over 50 years old.


Da Vinci’s father was from a well-known family, but his mother is said to be the daughter of a farmer or a woodcutter. So they were not formally married to each other.
His mother married another man several months after his birth, and his father married another woman at about the same time.
In such circumstance, I could imagine that he rarely had a chance to meet his mother, so it is no doubt that he drew his mother with all his heart whenever he saw her.

My assumption is that when he reached 50 years old he drew Mona Lisa based on the original picture of his mother that he drew in his childhood and the memory of his mother, making use of the techniques that he had accumulated and the drawing method that he had invented.

 
(3) From the above-mentioned supposition, the following matters concerning Mona Lisa are solved.

* Opinion that Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of da Vinci :
It is natural that a child resembles his mother. In other words the model of Mona Lisa is not himself, but his mother.


* Mysterious smile of Mona Lisa : Smile for her child, Leonardo da Vinci.


* The reason that he had always kept the Mona Lisa portrait with him till he passed away :
 Because Mona Lisa was the only memory of his mother


The idea of creating the profile (cf. CG sketch) of Mona Lisa occurred to me at around the end of May, 2006, but busyness of my office work let me delay the completion.

However, Mr. Bharat (India) who is my colleague sitting next to me saw my web site and said, "Your web site is only a virtual world that can be seen through the display. What is important are the real things. I want to look at your existing works. Life is short. You should start the Mona Lisa project as early as possible".

I was encouraged by his words, and I was able to accomplish the sculpture of Mona Lisa within three months from the middle of October to this month. I had been producing sculptures by cooperation of actual models until now, but I had to study the related publications to produce the sculpture of Mona Lisa because this time the model was a painting drawn 500 years ago.

By the way, I used two table tennis balls for Mona Lisa's eyeballs because it is said that a table tennis ball is almost like the shape of a human eyeball. In addition, my using the special lightweight color clay as its main material made the sculpture be very light in comparison with the other works that I produced. It weighed 575g only.

Therefore, I think that this method can be applied to the human being type robots to solve the weight problem.
 
                                          2007.1.20
                                          Shunya Susuki

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