By Professor Dolores García Ruiz, Art History Expert.
Since the beginning of my research on the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci in 1999, like all those who approach this figure and his work, I have come across various exciting unknowns. Among them, what was the true motive, value and deep meaning of the portrait that Leonardo made of a Florentine lady, which he never wanted to part with, which we now know as La Gioconda and is on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The search for solid, coherent and historically respectful answers to these questions has not been easy, given the complexity of Leonardo’s pictorial work and the frequency with which he, himself, or assisted by his assistants, produced new versions of works either already finished or in process of realization. Examples of Leonardo’s repetitive behavior include the different versions of The Virgin of the Rocks, whose first version (c. 1483-1486) is exhibited in the Louvre, the second version (c. 1497-1508) in the National Gallery of London and a third version (c. 1494-1497), known as the Cheramy Version, which was presented in 2001 in Milan on the occasion of the exhibition “Il Cinquecento lombardo: da Leonardo a Caravaggio”. An issue that, together with the absence of a signature on his paintings, has made extremely difficult for art experts to reach a consensus on the authorship of paintings that, over time, have been attributed to him; except in the case of La Gioconda of the Louvre, in which the consensus is unanimous given the historical evidence.
At the same time, I have tried to answer two enigmas in Leonardo’s work that were particularly intriguing to me: a) why did Leonardo agreed to paint the portrait of a lady who did not belong to the Florentine aristocracy, when he had refused to make those of Louis XII, King of France and of the Duchess of Mantua, and b) why the lady in the portrait of La Gioconda, unlike others painted by Leonardo himself or by other painters of his time, and contrary to the custom of the time, does not wear any jewelry that indicates an outstanding social position?
Two questions whose answers I have tried to find through a rigorous study of the historical, artistic and personal circumstances of the artist and his work, applying the iconographic-iconological method developed in 1939 by Dr. Panofsky[1] (Panofsky, 2001), according to which the meaning of a work of art is reached by advancing through three levels of understanding that allow us to distinguish between the form, the idea and the content of the work. The primary level or pre-iconographic description consists of making a description of the pure form of the work, stripped of cultural interpretation. In the secondary or iconographic analysis, the images of the work are identified, described and classified, and the cultural elements that provide an interpretation of what they represent are taken into account. Finally, in the tertiary or iconological the work is not seen as a separate act, but as a product of an historical environment and in which we ask ourselves questions about what the work means now and when it was carried out.
The results of these investigations have been collected in different essays. In the last of them, La Mona Lisa de Isleworth: la respuesta al enigma de las Giocondas (2021), I address the controversial issue of the authorship of The Isleworth Mona Lisa or Earlier Mona Lisa. A question I came to as a result of my research on the dyes[2] of the silk fabrics worn by the model of La Gioconda of the Louvre. To this, the results of a previous investigation were added, regarding the advances in perspective implemented by Da Vinci in La Gioconda, published in 2011[3] and later expanded on in 2017[4]. An investigation that has led to the discovery and demonstration that La Gioconda of the Louvreis a portrait, conceived and prepared by Leonardo da Vinci, to be seen in relief effect by whoever contemplates it.
The development and confluence of both investigations, one, on the relief effect in painting that Leonardo tirelessly sought, and the other, on the exclusivity of the dyes used in the garments worn by the model of La Gioconda of the Louvre, ended up directly implicating the portrait of The Isleworth Mona Lisa or Earlier Mona Lisa and the question of its authorship. This is a topic that involves us with real zeal at present, due to our leading vision of the artist and the valuation of intellectual creation as property. However, in Leonardo’s time there was no place for this contemporary individual approach. The artistic dynamic was very different, since it was not art but artisan craft that was exercised in workshops where the teacher and his students formed a team with well-defined functions and a production that belonged to the teacher. It is precisely with Leonardo da Vinci and in his maturity thanks to his undeniable genius, with whom began the recognition of the concept of artist and intellectual creation as something superior and differentiated from craftsmanship.
Given the transcendental importance of the questioning of the authorship of Leonardo da Vinci regarding The Isleworth Mona Lisa or Earlier Mona Lisa, I have collected this new research and its conclusions in the essay The Isleworth Mona Lisa: the answer to the riddle of the Giocondas (2021). Below, I detail the main points of interest of this work, based on documented facts, verifiable evidence and data extracted from direct and indirect sources, which I consider supports that The Isleworth Mona Lisa or Earlier Mona Lisa is an original work of Leonardo da Vinci.
TWO PORTRAITS OF THE SAME WOMAN
On September 27, 2012, The Mona Lisa Foundation unveiled a different version of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa portrait: The Isleworth Mona Lisa. Both portraits share many elements in common (composition, perspective, proportion, coloring, attitude of the figure and position). However, they differ in several important details. The main disparity between both portraits is the age of the model. The Isleworth Mona Lisa projects the image of a very young woman almost in her teens, while that of the Louvre corresponds to the portrait of the same woman as a lady, some ten years later. Secondly, the two portraits are of different sizes. La Gioconda in the Louvre (77 x 53 cm) is slightly smaller than the Isleworth (84.8 x 64.8 cm). Thirdly, despite the fact that both portraits are made using the oil technique, the support is different. While La Gioconda in the Louvre is a poplar panel, The Isleworth Mona Lisa is a canvas. Fourthly, the Isleworth does not have the layer of varnish that covers that of the Louvre, a technique that Leonardo only began to use from 1508. Fifthly, in the Isleworth, the figure has columns on both sides that do not appear in the Louvre portrait, with only a part of the base present in the latter. Finally, the background of The Isleworth or Earlier Mona Lisa, in a monochrome ocher, undoubtedly shows an unfinished painting, something very typical of the non-finite production so frequent in the work of the Florentine genius, unlike the elaborate background of that of the Louvre. Likewise, in The Isleworth Mona Lisa we can appreciate details such as the eyebrows and eyelashes of the model that are not found in La Gioconda of the Louvre.
Despite these differences, the comparison of both portraits reveals that the figures are aligned. The similarities between both figures are of such precision, despite the proportional difference of 10%, that they could only be drawn by the same artist, since it was necessary to use the same measurement technique and geometric proportions based on the use of “golden proportion”, the number phi (1.6183), also called “the divine proportion” (Rubino, 2013). This technique of anatomical proportions was used both in La Gioconda of the Louvre, and in The Isleworth Mona Lisa, as demonstrated by studies carried out by the Italian engineer Alfonso Rubino (2013), a prestigious expert in patterns and geometry in works of art. This geometric parallelism is revealing, since for Leonardo geometry is inherent and consubstantial to the anatomical proportion of his figures. The perfection of perspective in painting is one of the main objectives in Leonardo’s pictorial work. These comparative studies have made it clear that the model for the portrait known as The Isleworth Mona Lisa is the same woman in La Gioconda in the Louvre, only about a decade younger. To this fundamental element in common, such as the person of the model, we must add other elements that are also common in both portraits: the clothes that the model wears and the embroidery on the dress, which are the same.
It seems clear that we are dealing with two portraits of the same person and that neither of them is a copy of the other, since the techniques were used by the same artist and it would be inconsistent for a copyist to “rejuvenate” or “age” the model keeping all the proportions so exactly.
WHO DOES LEONARDO PORTRAY?
Numerous theories have been elaborated around the identity of La Gioconda of the Louvre, most of them absolutely extravagant. The hypotheses were triggered from the already famous robbery of the painting in the Louvre in 1911, perpetrated by the Italian Vincenzo Peruggia. Fortunately, the identity of the lady portrayed in La Gioconda in the Louvre, and therefore in The Isleworth Mona Lisa, has been fully certified with the discovery carried out by Professor Armin Schlechter in 2005 in the Heidelberg university library, supported by the director of the Museo Ideale in Vinci and expert in Leonardo studies, Alessandro Vezzosi[5]. It is a handwritten note written down by Agostino Vespucci, Machiavelli’s secretary, who worked for Leonardo as his clerk between 1503 and 1507. He wrote it in the margin of a copy of a work by the Roman philosopher Marco Tulio Cicero, in line with a reference to the Greek painter Apelles, the most famous of Antiquity and is dated October 1503. Vespucci’s note is written in Latin and we reproduce it below, together with its translation:
«Apelles pictor. Ita Leonardus Vincius facit in omnibus suis picturis, ut enim caput Lise del Giocondo et Anne matris virginis. Videbimus, quid faciet de aula magni consilii, de qua re convenit iam cum magisto Leonardo. 1503 October”.
«The painter Apelles. This is what Leonardo da Vinci does in all his paintings, including the portrait of Lisa de Giocondo and that of Ana, the mother of the Virgin. We will see what he does in the room of the Great Council, on what has already been agreed with the master Leonardo. October 1503».
This note from Vespucci provides us with decisive information about the identity of the sitter and the state of development of the portrait in October 1503:
1º) Regarding the identity of the lady portrayed, all doubts about the identity of the model of La Gioconda of the Louvreand, therefore, of The Isleworth Mona Lisa, are definitively cleared, when it is documented that it is Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo.
2º) Regarding the state and development of the portrait of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo on October 18, 1503, Vespucci provides us with three pieces of information of great value:
- Vespucci saw two unfinished paintings painted by Leonardo before October 1503: Santa Ana, with the Virgin and Child and the portrait of Giocondo’s wife.
- Vespucci’s comment does not seem to correspond to a portrait begun a short time before and barely advanced, evoking it before mentioning the sublime art and perfection of Apelles. Whoever mentions the portrait in terms of being considered by him an exceptional work of art, can only refer to a painting whose realization began long before the date of the note, October 1503. Even more so, if the comment alluded to Apelles’s technique of beginning paintings by representing the head. Taking into account that Leonardo had returned to Florence in March of that same year and that he had dedicated the following months to activities aimed at returning in Florence with the idea of settling down, as indicated by the fact that in April he related to local artists to the point of lending them some money [6], that on July 13 and October 11 he bought fields of olive trees and fruit trees in Fiesole before a notary and that he joined the painters’ brotherhood of San Luca when he received news of the proposal to which Vespucci alludes (decorating the Room of the Great Council of the Palazzo Vecchio) (Ruiz, 2011), together with his dedication to the design of devices and machines that many of them can be seen in the Codex Madrid II (ff. 1-140) and other multiple activities displayed by the Florentine master, it is not possible to think that Leonardo had necessary time to make progress on the portrait commissioned by Giocondo and justifying Vespucci’s admiration.
- Vespucci’s note expresses the fear that, with the fresco that he has been commissioned to decorate the Hall of the Great Council or Hall of the Five Hundred, what would happen with two previous works by Leonardo that he has contemplated: that they remain unfinished. This fear does not make sense with respect to a work in progress to be carried out. But when it is a work that is considered that it will not be continued. Something, on the other hand, that occurs frequently throughout Leonardo’s pictorial career, as happened with Saint Jerome (1480), The Adoration of the Magi (1481-1482) or Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child (1503), which were not finished. Likewise, Da Vinci has also offered us several examples of different versions of the same work, as is the case with the two panels dedicated to the Virgin of the Rocks that are shown, one, in the Louvre Museum, and the other, in the National Gallery, in London. The existence or appearance of different versions of the same work by Leonardo has led to controversy and disagreement among experts, when it comes to attribution of authorship.
My thesis is that Agostino Vespucci’s note confirms the existence of another portrait executed prior to La Gioconda of the Louvre. Vespucci, in fact, refers to the painting of Saint Anne, the Virgin and Child and the portrait of Giocondo’s wife as works made by Leonardo that he has left unfinished and not as paintings in progress. That is to say, Vespucci had come across a portrait of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, advanced enough in its development to arouse his admiration. But of which he is aware that it is not being continued or, even, that there is no will to get finished from the part of the artist. In my opinion, Vespucci’s note refers to an earlier portrait of Lisa Gherardini that Leonardo has not yet finished in 1503. A portrait of when she was about sixteen years old and recently married to Francesco del Giocondo, and not the portrait of the adult woman that Leonardo later shows in La Gioconda in the Louvre. Therefore, I consider that Vespucci’s note demonstrates the existence of a portrait of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo painted by Leonardo before 1503 and that it points, very directly, to what we know today as The Isleworth Mona Lisa or Earlier Mona Lisa, in which a Lisa Gherardini is portrayed at the age at which she married Francesco del Giocondo in 1495, about sixteen years old, eight years younger than in La Gioconda of the Louvre, and with all the characteristics described by Giorgio Vasari.
WHY DID LEONARDO AGREE TO PAINT THE PORTRAIT OF A MERCHANT’S WIFE?
The first question that assails us is the reason for the acceptance of the commission of a portrait received from a silk merchant, that is, a member of the incipient European bourgeoisie, and on a conventional topic, neither political nor religious. Based on a source like Anonymous Gaddiano, from the painter and treatise writer Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo and on the indication that Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo’s first biographer gave us, this remains clearly not very understandable, since he does so after having rejected several prestigious commissions, such as the portraits of Luis XII, King of France and of the Duchess of Mantua, Isabella d’Este, who both would have been generously paid. Economic needs are not the answer to understand the motivation behind this portrait of Giocondo’s wife, since Leonardo never got paid for his work.
So, once the economic motive has been ruled out, the fact that Da Vinci dedicated his time to this task for four years and during a difficult period, such as the decoration of the Hall of the Five Hundred and the pharaonic project of the diversion of the Arno river, there cannot be a completely rational explanation. However, Leonardo’s restless character, always driven by curiosity and a constant desire to excel, together with a gentle, affable personality and a gift for people can explain why Da Vinci accepted, on a first occasion out of commitment, the commission from Francesco del Giocondo who was a good client of his father’s notary’s office, and in the city of Florence, a well-known neighbor, especially since the occasion of the Giocondo nuptials held in 1495.
A portrait that Leonardo would begin in 1495 during his stay in Florence, where he returned when he was summoned by the city government, then governed by Savonarola, to form part of the council of artists and advise on the future decoration of the Hall of the Five Hundred that had just been built in the Palazzo Vecchio (Vasari, 1848). As Leonardo had to leave Florence hastily when he was urgently requested by Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, a few months later, the portrait of Giocondo’s wife remained unfinished in the possession of the Giocondos family because the painter had to begin the decoration of the Northern wall of the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, which we know today as The Last Supper.
WHY DID LEONARDO PAINT A SECOND PORTRAIT OF LISA?
While everyone admired The Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie as extraordinary, on the contrary, Leonardo was dissatisfied with his work. The astonishing effect of depth that he had achieved on a wall, had been achieved with the technique he had learned in Verrocchio’s workshop and by contemplating works of great painters, such as Masaccio‘s Trinity in Santa Maria Novella: representing architectural elements that give a sensation of depth with linear perspective and a vanishing point. Leonardo aspired to free himself from the need to represent architectural elements in order to achieve that “a painted thing appears to the eye with such bulk and relief, that it is the same as if it were looked at in a mirror[7]”. Leonardo understood that to achieve this it was essential to know how the human eye works and where the images that we see are produced. To this he dedicated years of study and experiments in Milan and his manuscripts reflect that he discovered truly revolutionary knowledge for his time:
1) The theory of visual rays inherited from the Greeks was wrong: it is not the eyes that throw rays on objects, but rather the objects that reflect light rays and our eyes capture them.
2) The image is formed in the brain, not in the eyes.
3) The image we perceive is the sum of those perceived by both eyes, which differ in part.
4) The difference between the perceptions of both eyes constantly informs us of the distance at which the objects are.
5) As long as the brain is informed by both eyes, it will distinguish a flat surface from one with depth:
« It is impossible for a painted thing to appear to the eye with so much bulk and relief, that it is the same as if one were looking through a mirror (although the surface is the same) as this one is not seen with only one eye. » (Precept LIII of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci)
All this information led him to the conclusion that the only way to contemplate a flat image, such as a portrait, with the sensation of relief and depth that he was looking for, was to trick the brain by looking through only one eye and prepare the painting for this effect:
«It is not possible for a painting, even if it perfectly imitates the natural one in the contour, shadows, lights and coloring, to appear in the same relief as the original, if it is not seen from a long distance and only with one eye.” (CCCXLI Precept of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci)
In 1503, eight years after leaving Florence and five after finishing The Last Supper in Milan, Leonardo returned to the Tuscan city. Once there, most likely, he must have been met with Francesco del Giocondo’s insistence that he return to the portrait, with his partially finished work and only pending to finish the background, but with a physically more mature model, eight years later. This evolution met the fact that himself, he was no longer the same painter. He had evolved and discovered a technique for painting with a relief effect, which he had not yet implemented in any work beyond his experiments.
It is very likely that Leonardo, driven by his constant desire to challenge, improving himself and his technical evolution and by unexplained personal reasons, decided to meet Francesco del Giocondo’s desire to finish the portrait; but, not by continuing the unfinished portrait of a newly married young woman now mother of three young children, but by starting a second portrait in which he could implement the conclusions of his experiments in optics, ocular physiology, and perspective. Therefore, I consider that taking up the portrait of Giocondo’s wife became an opportunity for Leonardo to implement his research on perspective with his recent discoveries on human vision and to achieve a portrait that can be seen in relief. Reason why Leonardo, in 1503, did not continue painting The Earlier Mona Lisa, but began a new and revolutionary portrait, La Gioconda of the Louvre, with which he achieved a masterpiece that can be seen with relief effect with the naked eye, as I demonstrate in La Gioconda: a portrait in relief (2017). Given the time elapsed, the model will appear older than in the first one. These two portraits perfectly illustrate the Leonardian concept of painting as what we could call “constant mirror of the living”.
Here begins the duality and specific destiny of these two masterpieces: The Earlier Mona Lisa or Isleworth and La Gioconda of the Louvre. The first one, the young Lisa, The Earlier Mona Lisa remained in the intimate circle of a family, where Vasari had the opportunity to contemplate it and whose traces disappeared for centuries. And the other, La Gioconda of the Louvre, after being in the privacy of Leonardo’s rooms until the end of his life, became immediately public as the property of Francis I, the King of France.
The fact that Leonardo did not get rid in life of the portrait of Francesco del Giocondo’s wife despite having sold it to Francis I, beyond the highest value that La Gioconda of the Louvrecould mean for him, opens a field still to be explored on the connection of the painter with his model, Lisa Gherardini, in view of the biographical relationship. One of the emblematic keys to the Mona Lisa enigma in Leonardo’s work is that the emotional reception and the power of fascination exerted by The Earlier Mona Lisa and La Gioconda on whoever contemplates them are, by far, much more intense than in any other work by him.
The recognition of La Gioconda of the Louvreas an original work of Leonardo da Vinci is unanimous and undisputed by art experts and historians. Since Vespucci’s note documents the existence of a portrait of Giocondo’s wife prior to 1503, we have shown the evolution that La Gioconda supposesin her pictorial career compared to a portrait of the same woman a few years earlier, with identical clothing, same position, proportion and geometry. It appears that the very existence of La Gioconda of the Louvreis explained by the previous existence of The Earlier Mona Lisa therefore, it can be concluded that both are works by the same painter: Leonardo da Vinci.
AN UNEXPLAINED ANOMALY
In any of Lisa Gherardini’s portraits, a significant and incomprehensible anomaly can be observed in the social-historical context, in the case of the wife of an influential Florentine silk trader: she is not wearing any jewelry. In the fifteenth-century Florence, family status was marked by the jewels worn by wives at public events and in portraits. So strong was the demand for jewels, that in Quattrocento’s Firenze there were more than a hundred workshops registered in the jewelers’ guild (Amenós, 15-09-2013). We can see in the portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni made by Domenico Ghirlandaio, that the jewels worn by the lady (a brooch, two rings, a pearl pendant and a coral necklace in the background) play an important role, since they reveal the status of Lorenzo Tornabuoni’s wife. Likewise, we find numerous examples in works both by Ghirlandaio himself, such as Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1490-1494) (Lisbon, Museu Calouste), and by other contemporary painters such as the Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (1485), painted by Piero di Cosimo ( Chantilly, Condé Museum) or the Portrait of a Woman (c. 1470) by Piero del Pollaiuolo (New York, Metropolitan Museum), in which a large ruby hangs from the pearl necklace and the hair is enhanced by precious stones and pearls.
Nor can we ignore the fact that in other portraits made by Leonardo da Vinci himself, such as The Lady with an Ermine (1489), La Belle Ferronnière (1490) and the Portrait of Beatriz d’Este (1500), whose authorship is being debated with Ambrogio de Predis, the models appear distinguished by different types of jewelry.
LISA GHERARDINI’S DRESS: THE JEWEL THAT DISTINGUISHES HER
Monna Lisa Gherardini wears silk garments tinted with exceptional colors for the time: raven black, aubergine, purple and fawn yellow. What is surprising is that these colors, which were roughly achieved in wool and cotton, were not be successfully achieved in silk until late XVIth century[JF1] .
Before the arrival of the Spanish in America, silk in Europe had been dyed in red, green, yellow, blue and their combinations successfully. However, the black dye on silk did not give good results, since the mordants that had to be used to fix the color damaged the delicate fabric due to their high tannin content and the dyes only achieved a short-lasting black with little shine, which soon was turning brownish. Vegetable dyes such as black tea, walnut shells, false acoro (Iris pseudacorus) roots, and galls were used to achieve black fabrics [8]. In Spain, the most commonly used black dye was extracted from a native shrub, sumac (Cabrera-Lafuente, 1995), which was used to dye cotton, linen, wool, and also leather. In silk, a true black was not achieved, but a very dark gray.
The three colors that make up Lisa Gherardini’s costumes in the Earlier Mona Lisa mean two very important things: 1) Lisa’s silk garments only could have been dyed in Spain, at the time, with dyes extracted from “palos de hec or palo de tinte”, 2) Samples of this plant only arrived in Spain and reached Europe after the discovery in the Americas of a dying plant that was provided by Columbus himself and before 1498. This is confirmed by Bartolomé de Las Casas in his work Relación del tercer viaje del Almirante, reproducing the letter addressed by Columbus to the Catholic Kings giving an account of their third trip and reminding them of their merits. De Las Casas also confirms with his own notes that Columbus had brought to Castilla in his first two voyages in 1492 and 1496, a certain amount of what they believed, due to its similarity, to be the brazilwood, the legendary “ pau brasil” that gave its name to Brazil:
“…and I brought you quite a sample of gold, and that there are miners and very large grains, and also of copper; and I brought them many kinds of spices, about which it would be long to write, and I told them about the great quantity of Brazil [9], and infinite other things” (Fernández de Navarrete, 1922).
This news is also reported by the Italian-born chronicler Pedro Martyr of Anglería in his Decades, referring to the return of the first Columbian expeditions.
Since in the first portrait, The Earlier or Isleworth Mona Lisa, Lisa Gherardini already appears to be wearing a married woman’s veil, it would have been made the same year as the Giocondos’ wedding, 1495, or a few months later, judging by the extreme youth of the model. The garments worn by the wife of the most important silk trader in Florencewoukd not have been made of any other fabric than silk and would have been dyed in those colors that were impossible before the arrival of the American dyewood in Europe, through Spain where had been made tests on silk unofficially and with dye sticks shortly after the return of Christopher Columbus in 1493, from his first expedition.
These tests with the samples of American dyewood in silk fibers must have been carried out in a Spanish city, precisely in Valencia, but far from the Castilian power, with dyers with proven experience, with craft infrastructures and artisans capable of turning them into high-quality fabrics, within a dynamic international market in which they could be sold without much delay to some foreign merchant who did not require the intervention of a notary and was willing to pay a good price for a scoop. At that time these requirements were met by Valencia, like no other city on the Peninsula.On the one hand, because of its excellent dyers and silk makers and, on the other, because numerous Florentine commercial agents worked there, even had settled there, frequently arranging purchases and sales without a notarial contract, in order to evade fiscal surveillance. Francesco del Giocondo himself had commercial agents in Valencia to arrange purchases of wool from Morella and silk fabrics from Valencia. A network of international collaborators, that his father and uncles already had since the days when they were trading wool and cloth (Pallanti, 2004).
The fact that samples of palo de hec arrived in Valencia unofficially, after the first expedition in 1493, is not strange but very likely if we consider a decisive factor: Luis de Santángel, the right hand of the Catholic Monarchs and financier of the first Columbus’s voyage, was from Valencia. Already on his first return, Columbus provided the Catholic Monarchs with a large number of samples of palo de hec, which do not seem to have been paid attention to because they were confused with brazilwood (Contreras A. , 2011), which was already known. It is not unreasonable that Luis de Santángel, always in contact with his homeland, where he maintained a home, family and economic interests and who, in his capacity as a royal official and as an influential Valencian, is related to the Juries that constituted the governing body of the city, many of them belonging to the powerful guilds of dyers and velluters[10] (silk and velvet weavers), was the one who sent samples of the palo de hec to the hands of dyers in Valencia to carry out secret tests on its possible uses. Let us not forget that in 1495 Luis de Santángel wanted to personally take charge, of guarding and transporting to Valencia the funds that the Crown of Castile returned to this city, for the expenses he bore to support the war in Granada; he did so on February 25 of that year. For this reason, a safe-conduct was issued in favor of Santángel, so that the authorities in charge of controlling the traffic of «forbidden things», would clear his way without checking what he was carrying. A wonderful opportunity to bring samples of palo de hec to Valencia for testing by a trusted dyer, as befitted a seasoned businessman like Santángel, with an instinct for discovering new business opportunities, high profitability and numerous business networks, both national and international through which he amassed his fortune.
TWO PORTRAITS, ONE DRESS
The fact that the clothes that Lisa Gherardini wears in the two versions of her portrait (Isleworth and Louvre) are the same, indicates their particular importance and value. Even more so, when eight years elapsed between the two versions, The Earlier Mona Lisa or Isleworth, and the second, La Gioconda of the Louvre, and yet, the wife of the most prosperous and influential silk merchant in Florence returns to pose with the same clothes and again without jewelry.
Therefore, this leads us to think that the jewel that the Giocondo family wanted to display before the Florentine society were precisely the black silk garments worn by Lisa, the wife and bearer of the honor of the Giocondos. These silk garments, due to their high value and novelty, could well have been a wedding gift from the husband, Francesco del Giocondo, since they were comparable to a valuable jewel, which is why none of them appear in the portrait, along with being portrayed by the best painter of his time: Leonardo da Vinci.
It is not difficult to imagine the satisfaction of Francesco del Giocondo at being able to offer his young wife an authentic treasure, first in all of Europe: unique pieces of black silk fabric, which due to their width must have come from Valencian silk looms, dyed with the revolutionary dyes of a product recently brought by the Spanish from the Americas. An exclusive luxury that, in 1495, was not yet even known to kings or ladies of the highest lineage. This deserved to be immortalized in the portrait destined for the family memory of the Giocondos, a family of rich merchants that had been prospering successfully. Therefore, it is these “Spanish” silk garments that distinguish Lisa Gherardini and the Giocondos as one of the families that made up the wealthy and emerging bourgeois elite of Florence, at the beginning of the 16th century.
GIOCONDO: A SERIOUS BUSINESSMAN
Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobio di Giocondo has gone down in history as the husband of Lisa Gherardini, the woman portrayed by Leonardo da Vinci in the most famous painting in the world: La Gioconda. However, he was an important man himself in his time.
Francesco del Giocondo was a Florentine silk merchant belonging to a saga of barrel artisans who became engaged in silk weaving until 1450, when they began to trade woolen cloth and fine cloth wholesale. To do this, they had an extensive network of commercial agents in other Italian cities and in the main European cities, where they traded in finished products. After inheriting part of the family business from his father, Francesco del Giocondo took over the business and soon became the largest importer and wholesaler of silk in Florence. As he belonged to the class of artisans, his family maintained a long tradition of active participation in positions of responsibility in the organs of power in Florence. Francesco del Giocondo held government posts in Florence and in 1512 he was elected a member of the Consiglio dei Dodici Buonomini. Like good merchants, the Giocondo never got involved in supporting the various political factions; that allowed them to remain stable in influential places and in contact with the powerful. However, Giocondo was imprisoned for a brief time, as a result of political vendettas, for supporting the Medici, with whom he had close personal relationships, both personally, for being part owner of a warehouse adjoining a Medici property, and commercially, for being the main supplier of silk and wool from Lorenzo the Magnificent, as well as financially by using Medici banking for their national and international commercial transactions (Pallanti, 2004, pág. 54).
The fact that Francesco del Giocondo obtained some unique silk pieces dyed with innovative dyes recently brought in the ships of Christopher Columbus was part of the regular business of Italian merchants who had been buying silk fabrics and fibers in Valencia, since the 14th century. The commercial activity of the Florentines in the Kingdom of Valencia became so intense that it led the government of the Republic of Florence in 1424 to include its capital, Valencia, as a fixed scale for its state system of galleys, both for the Mediterranean commercial routes as for the Atlantic (González Arévalo, enero-junio de 2011, pág. 127). News from the New World circulated at high speed along the silk routes between Spain and Italy. Florentine and Genovese merchants were informed from the first moments of the discovery of the New World, by their Italian commercial agents who operated in the Iberian Peninsula. This is how the news about the arrival of plants for commercial purposes reached Italy.
One of the first to know about it was the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. In 1494, he received a letter from Niccolo Scilliacio, a professor at the University of Pavia and his protégé, who at that time was in Barcelona, at the court of the Catholic Monarchs, and possibly had the opportunity to meet one of Columbus’ companions on his first trip. News that should have reached Francesco del Giocondo, who would be promptly informed by his agents in Valencia, as well as the tests that were being carried out there with the new silk fiber plant, secretly and behind the strict controls of the guilds of Valencian dyers and velluters. Logically, the fabrics resulting from these tests could not be introduced into the commercial circuit, under heavy penalty and license withdrawals, nor sold before a notary. Therefore, a Florentine agent was the ideal client to formalize a sale, without legal trace, of fabrics that could be easily camouflaged among other pieces due to their small size and fineness.
CONCLUSIONS
- The Earlier Mona Lisa or Isleworth Mona Lisa is an original Da Vinci and early work.
The fact that the black silk clothes that Lisa Gherardini wears in both versions of the portrait are the same is a major information key that has to be considered in its historical context. That has been only possible thanks to the dyes brought from the New World by the Spanish from 1493 and provides us with extraordinary reinforcement of the hypothesis that La Gioconda of the Louvre is not independent of the existence of The Isleworth Mona Lisa or Earlier Mona Lisa. But, on the contrary, that La Gioconda of the Louvreowes its raison d’être and its appearance to the previous existence of The Earlier Mona Lisa. That reason allows me to affirm emphatically, that The Earlier or Isleworth Mona Lisa is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, original by Leonardo da Vinci and prior to the painting of the Louvre. Therefore, La Gioconda of the Louvreis the continuation of Leonardo’s commitment to finish the previous unfinished portrait, but painting a new one in which he applied his recent acquired knowledge.
- The relief effect of La Gioconda and its recognized authorship prove the originality of The Earlier Mona Lisa.
The authorship recognized and attributed to Leonardo of La Gioconda of the Louvre and the evolution of perspective with relief effect that it supposes in the painter’s career, with respect to the portrait of a younger Lisa, make La Gioconda of the Louvre, in itself, is irrefutable proof of the previous existence of The Earlier Mona Lisa or Isleworth Mona Lisa and that both are the work of the same author: Leonardo da Vinci. Based on the above, I consider that it is proven that the portrait known as The Earlier Mona Lisa came from the hands of the Florentine painter Leonardo da Vinci.
- The Earlier Mona Lisa and La Gioconda: an emblematic revolutionary crossroads.
In turn, the clothes that Lisa Gherardini wears in the portraits that Leonardo da Vinci made of her, definitively link her to the gigantic historical events of her time: the encounter with a New World, the Italian Renaissance, the Silk Roads from the East and the extraordinary economic and cultural flourishing of Valencia in the 15th and 16th centuries. In The Earlier Mona Lisa, for the first time in history, the Orient and its silk, Europe and its art, America and its natural resources merged. A fusion, that Leonardo da Vinci sublimated in an exquisite non-finite portrait of an enchanting very young Lisa Gherardini. In my opinion, without any doubt, this painting, The Earlier Mona Lisa is one of his indisputable and unsurpassed masterpieces.
Dolores García Ruiz, writer and historical researcher.
“Letras del Mediterráneo” Award 2016.
President of the UHE in the Valencian Community.
For more information about the researcher and her works: https://tinyurl.com/29xuratt
REFERENCES
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Rubino, A. (2013). Il secreto dell’Uomo vitruviano di Leonardo. Ed. Liberfaber.
Ruiz, E. (2011). Keys to a prodigious mind. Leonardo da Vinci. Madrid: Canal de Isabel II.
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[1]Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) was a German art historian and theorist, Professor of Art History at the Universities of Hamburg, Princeton and Harvard. In his work Estudios sobre iconología (1939) he established the bases of his iconographic-iconological method and presented Art History as a science of interpretation.
[2]Valencia and its silk art in La Gioconda (2018).
[3] The keys to the Mona Lisa (2011).
[4] La Gioconda, a portrait “in relief ” (2017).
[5]Alessandro Vezzosi, art critic, teacher and artist, is one of the most renowned experts on Leonardo da Vinci, was a disciple of Carlo Pedretti and is an honorary professor at the Florence Academy of Arts and Design.
[6]London, British Library, Codex Arundel , f. 229v.
[7]Precept LIII of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
[8]The galls are spherical growths that the tree itself generates to defend itself against the bites of certain insects or microorganism infections.
[9]Brazil or brazilwood tree that grew in India and from which a red dye widely used in the medieval textile industry was extracted.
[10] Velluter: weaver of silk fabrics and velvets.