Kind: captions
Language: en
foreign
Ardo da Vinci
legendary artist his genius is universal
it speaks to everybody he was also a
scientist
and inventor there was a reason for
every decision in every line
how did he create the most famous
painting on Earth you can perceive the
beating of the pulse underneath her skin
the answers have been as elusive as her
smile Leonardo embraced mystery
now researchers are peeling away the
layers thanks to a new kind of
scientific investigation we are really
able to get inside the painting can
science unlock her secrets she seems
like she's alive because she looks
different depending on where you're
looking
and decipher the genius behind her
creator
decoding Da Vinci right now on Nova
[Music]
in the heart of Paris lies a former
royal castle
it is now the world's busiest Art Museum
the Louvre
filled with glorious galleries of
Antiquities mummies and michelangelos
but one Masterpiece is the biggest draw
of all
today's reigning Queen
the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
the Mona Lisa has become some Grand
thing in our imagination
Mona Lisa you'd have a different feeling
about what she has in mind
every year Millions visit her drawn by
her beauty
or perhaps her Fame
they've clocked the average amount the
visitors spent looking at the Mona Lisa
and that's roughly about 15 seconds
you're more focused on getting a good
picture for your Instagram feed than
actually looking at the painting
so is the Mona Lisa just famous for
being famous
more icon than art
or does she deserve her place on the
louvre's throne as the most celebrated
painting in the world
it's not just a portrait of a woman who
is living 500 years ago it's a
demonstration of how painting could show
life
now researchers are using new techniques
to investigate the most famous painting
on Earth like never before
the smile is crucial
it's teasing you saying I know something
you don't know
could the Mona Lisa with her enigmatic
smile be the key to decoding the man who
made her
Leonardo da Vinci
no doubt he was a brilliant artist
but he was also a groundbreaking
scientist
he anticipated theories by both Galileo
and Newton by at least a century
and dreamed up remarkable inventions
that seemed to predict a modern age
armored tanks
flying machines
even something like a self-driving car
but were his scientific Explorations a
distraction from his painting
or with science the secret to his
artistic genius
was the Mona Lisa in fact Leonardo's
greatest invention
if you want to understand Leonardo da
Vinci you just have to look at the Mona
Lisa because it's all there
it's the combination of a lifetime spent
loving science and art
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in the back streets of Florence Italy
Walter Conte and his daughter Elena
prepare for their tribute to Leonardo
and the Mona Lisa
[Music]
human statues handing out Leonardo
quotes
their way of marking the 500th
anniversary of Leonardo's death
and just one of many celebrations that
are in the works around the world
from A Fine Art Museum in Beijing
to a multimedia Extravaganza in Peru
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and a blockbuster Exhibition at the
Louvre
for the Louvre museum is a really
important moment because the Louvre is
like Leonardo da Vinci we have the third
of all his paintings Vincent Delevan
oversees the five Leonardo masterpieces
that hang at the Louvre
that's the largest collection in the
world
while Leonardo may be the most famous
painter of all time he completed
surprisingly few paintings Leonardo was
with someone experimental he didn't want
to paint a lot he wanted to paint a
perfect painting
so what did it take for Leonardo to make
a perfect painting
the answer may be lying right under
deluvan's feet
for the upcoming exhibition he is
working with a team of scientists housed
downstairs from the Louvre at the center
for research and restoration of museums
in France
to a new kind of scientific
investigation we are really able to get
inside the painting and to understand
how Leonardo was working to perfect the
painting for a long long time during 5
10 20 years it's really something really
specific to Leonardo
they're appearing deep inside Leonardo's
masterpieces hoping to reveal the
secrets of his technique that our eyes
cannot see
I see something that is pleased to be
two-dimensional but which is really
three-dimensional because there is a
depth in a painting
for art historian Bruno Matan the first
step is to understand the chemistry of
Leonardo's paint
starting with the powdered minerals that
were the source of his colors
you have green which is made with the
scratching of copper plates you have
Vermilion which is made with Mercury you
have lead white which is made with lead
but these can't be applied directly on
the painting has to be mixed with
something else
these colored pigments are mixed with a
liquid like oil
that gets painted on in layers
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in a cross section of a painting you
have the base which today is frequently
canvas but in Leonardo's time they used
planks of wood
on that is a coat of white that can
reflect light
as the artist Works semi-translucent
paint is built up layer by layer
and then sealed with a coat of varnish
in the end our eyes see the interplay
between the light reflected off
different pigments suspended in the
layers
creating depth and Elusive subtleties
oil is a transverse of medium which
gives to them a mixture of deepness we
can see through all the layers you don't
only see a flat surface you have the
feeling of what is beneath the painting
Leonardo worked on the Mona Lisa for
about 16 years
can these investigative techniques help
reveal ultimately what he was doing all
that time
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the Mona Lisa began in Florence Italy in
1503 as a commission from a wealthy
cloth Merchant to paint his wife Lisa
gerardini
the word Mona was a polite form of
address much like Madam hence Mona Lisa
over time she became something much more
the Mona Lisa started off as a portrait
for a Merchant's wife and ended up as a
sort of Manifesto if you want of his
abilities as a painter
of his conception of the world even
so is this what the real Lisa looked
like
and how different does she appear today
from what Leonardo painted 500 years ago
to find out scientists captured the Mona
Lisa with an array of high-tech cameras
these detect light in the
electromagnetic spectrum that is not
visible to our eyes
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so just as some cameras can see wildlife
in the dark
these cameras can help us see the Mona
Lisa in a new light
literally
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each image provides clues about her past
so if you have a lot of different images
which can tell us about the structure of
the painting and the way it has been
made
in the ultraviolet image blotches of
dark blue appear
these revealed areas of paint which are
not by Leonardo's hand
their modern Restorations to repair
damage to the painting like this
dangerous crack in the wood base
it shows us that the painting is in fact
covered by a greenish vanish which
changes the colors of the through
painting this thick varnish has yellowed
and darkened over time
making it difficult to make out some of
the details
which is probably like a prompt lady we
should say because we do not know where
the arm stops
but this infrared image clearly shows
this dark area was once translucent
Lisa is wearing a veil that gracefully
Falls over her surprisingly slender
shoulders
to penetrate the very deepest layers the
team turned to a tool more familiar to
us from a doctor's office
x-rays
these can reveal how the painting began
most artists at the time began with a
drawing and then filled it in with thick
paint
so the X-ray looks like this
Raphael's la belge
the figures started out clearly defined
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stayed that way
but when Leonardo's paintings are
x-rayed the figures often vanish
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Leonardo image of like Phantom
we don't understand at First Sight what
really is on the picture
in the X-ray of the Mona Lisa there is
no clear outline
instead the image evolved as Leonardo
made continual adjustments
this also suggests Lisa may not have
looked exactly like this
he keeps it he doesn't deliver it to the
merchant who commissioned it because for
him it's no longer a portrait of Mona
Lisa it is a universal painting
in the upcoming exhibition Delia van
plans to hang some of these scientific
masterpieces along with Leonardo's
original paintings
the scans prove an essential point about
Leonardo's artistry
he painted like no one else
Leonardo is one of the first artists to
be really free
he felt free to change his mind not only
during the drawing preparation but also
during the painting of his work
this is incredibly not common he is the
only one to give such a liberty free
manner in his execution
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artists then were considered Craftsmen
and needed to churn Out Paintings for
patrons
so how did Leonardo become such a free
spirit
from the beginning Leonardo was an
outsider
born in 1452 to an unwed farm girl in
the small Italian town of Vinci he was
named Leonardo from Vinci therefore
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo had the great Good Fortune to
be born out of wedlock it meant he
didn't have crammed into him
the sort of old dusty Scholastic wisdom
of the Middle Ages instead he got to be
self-taught it also meant he doesn't
have to be a notary like his father and
so he has a fresh life where he can be
anything he wants
at about 14 Leonardo's father sent him
to learn a trade in Florence the
epicenter of Commerce learning and
Beauty at the beginning of the
Renaissance
Flores was one of their most advanced
social organizations of the planet very
wealthy city a city that was attracting
the brightest guys around
Florence he's just extraordinary at this
time
to produce Donatello mazzachio brunleski
Michelangelo Raphael
foreign with no formal education
Leonardo started as an apprentice in one
of the leading artist Studios of the day
the workshop of Andrea Del verrocchio
was a stouter above all but also a
painter an architect you could play
music
so the example of veracio was very
important to Leonardo
Leonardo's training with Baroque is a
real model of how an artist
should evolve
technique is subordinate to the active
scene it's about the eye and it's
Leonardo who first described that
It is believed
model for this verrocchio statue of
David is his Apprentice
the young Leonardo
so they think that Leonardo posed a
forest master
it's a very elegant boy face frame by
these beautiful curls despite the
circumstances of his illegitimate birth
the workshop gave Leonardo a way to get
ahead in life
he's a misfit he's illegitimate he's gay
he's left-handed he's a vegetarian he's
distracted and yet he's embraced by the
people of Florence because it was a very
tolerant City
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one of the most challenging construction
projects of the day was capping the Dome
of the breathtaking Cathedral with a
golden sphere
the commission of the crowning of the
cupola with a gilded sphere it was a
very important one and that the
commission de veracchio secured
varuccio's team which
with the young Leonardo had to figure
out not only the design but also how to
secure the one and a half ton ball on
top of the nearly 370 foot high
Cathedral
figuring out how to get the ball on top
of the cathedral helps Leonardo become a
great engineer it helps them become an
artist because he gets the perspective
of the ball right that combination of
science engineering and art becomes part
of who Leonardo da Vinci is
in fact in sheer quantity Leonardo's
scientific investigations far outweigh
his output of paintings
the proof of that lies in a remarkable
collection of replicas of his notebooks
we have very few records in the whole
history of science similar to Leonardo's
manuscripts these are not books you
cannot compare that to a work of by
Galileo or by Newton because they have
solved the problems before writing their
books
Paolo galusi is the director of the
Galileo Museum in Florence
what we have in Leonardo is the direct
expression of his internal dialogue
Leonardo's notebooks span his lifetime
they even come pocket-sized
we're sure that those 6 000 pages that
we have are by him and this is just
one-fourth of what he actually penned so
we're talking about something I was
obsessed by throughout his life
the Brilliance and breadth of Leonardo's
notebooks is astonishing
his ideas seem to predict our Modern Age
making Leonardo much more than a
Renaissance scientist for many
copter like
and a parachute
a fascination with water led to
ambitious civil engineering proposals
[Music]
and he conceived an intriguing
self-propelled machine that seems part
automobile part early robot
but could any of these inventive designs
have actually worked
[Music]
Leonardo is of course a great artist but
he's also a great scientist and I would
argue a great engineer the geometry is
stunning one small sketch in Leonardo's
notebooks has so intrigued MIT engineer
John oxendorf that he asked his graduate
student Carly best to bring 21st century
engineering rigor to see if Leonardo's
16th century idea would in fact stand
there is a historical reason for this
because you see it in the drawing right
yeah these two are in 1502 the year
before starting the Mona Lisa Leonardo
Leonard proposed to the Sultan of the
Ottoman Empire a bridge in
Constantinople five times longer than
any other span at the time
his plan for this ambitious project
sketched upside down in a small notebook
offers few details
yet just enough for best to bring it to
life
Leonardo provided four measurements but
he provided
two sketches at first it seems like a
rough sketch but as I dug into it I
realized there was a reason for every
decision in every line there was a lot
of thought put into the force
distribution and it wasn't just
aesthetic
it was engineering
and to test that engineering fast and
her colleagues have built a scale model
of the bridge
state-of-the-art 3D printer
four 3D printing came along we'd have to
try to build that bridge as close as we
could to the full scale because you
couldn't reliably get the geometry quite
right
Leonardo's Stone Bridge would have been
500 times the size of this model
but the physics are exactly the same we
have the bridge and we have the mold
that's holding it up the first piece
should be easy to take off
piece by piece she removes the styrofoam
a modern day stand-in for the wooden
scaffolding used in Leonardo's day
this is more like heart surgery than
Bridge construction finally the last
support is removed
and Leonardo's Stone Bridge stands
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the geometry is aesthetically beautiful
and
the fact that this is standing on its
own tells us that it was feasible
absolutely wow
whose Bridge even stays up when they
simulate an earthquake
oh my God it is moved by 30 feet
and the art still stands the bridge does
eventually collapse
but only after being moved the
equivalent of 50 feet
Leonardo has the artistic ability and he
also has that scientific knowledge and
that engineering capability where he can
create things that are beautiful and
structurally sound
bass clearly had to fill in some details
to get from this sketch
to this model
and we don't know if the bridge could
have been built with the wooden scaffold
of the day
and he also shows but she has shown
Leonardo got the basic physics right
what's extraordinary is the ideas that
he was coming up with
more than 500 years ago
we're still trying to understand them
[Music]
as with this ambitious proposal to the
sultan Leonardo sought out wealthy
patrons throughout his life to support
not only his art but his scientific
explorations
[Music]
30. he
came to Milan to work for its Duke
17 years later when the Duke was deposed
Leonardo had to move once again
back to Florence and later Rome
his accomplishments in science and art
meant he had much to offer Leonardo
sells himself as an engineer as well as
an artist because he knows he can make a
Better Living
I think Leonardo just loved the
connection of the Arts and Sciences and
he didn't want to have to be siled as
just the painter
Leonardo's Explorations in science can
also be clearly seen in the details of
his paintings
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botany
to the physics of flowing water
even the curls of human hair
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paint something absolutely perfect he
had to understand how nature was done
to paint a mountain to paint rocks he
had to understand why the Rock's wire of
that kind he was obsessed with that and
that was what he called the science of
painting
the science of painting was all
encompassing for Leonardo
but how could he capture the beauty he
observed in nature with paint
[Music]
back at the Louvre art restorers and
researchers are uncovering new clues in
an elegant intensive care unit for
priceless works of art
[Music]
thank you
to prepare for the upcoming exhibit
gelivera and the team of scientists are
restoring a painting long shrouded by
controversy
for centuries this portrait of Bacchus
was considered one of the few paintings
by Leonardo's hand
but now experts aren't so sure
for centuries that painting was
attributed to Leonardo
but during the 20th century some
historians said well it looks like a
difference compared to the other
paintings
Cynthia Pasquale has been brought in to
restore the painting
unique scientific techniques provide the
clues she needs to finally solve the
mystery
did Leonardo in fact paint this
is
restoration work is not for the faint of
heart
this painting may be in bad shape
but Pasquale is still taking her scalpel
to an Irreplaceable masterpiece
she scrapes away the yellow darkened
varnish
revealing a vibrant color beneath
okay
but other parts of the painting appear
more damaged
so Pasquale must rely on her training
not only in art history
but also chemistry
the colors of pigment in paint can
change or fade over time
but the chemistry of the pigments
themselves can still be detected
Pasquale orders a special scan for the
element copper often used in green paint
the scan reveals this dark area of the
painting was once a lush Garden
until the copper in the paint darkened
so we can see a lot of vegetables and
leaves and plants and flour
and when you look on the surface of the
work they are not
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while the beauty of these plants may
suggest Leonardo's meticulous attention
to detail
that's not enough to say for sure he
painted it himself
[Music]
so the investigation turns to his
brushwork
one of the most characteristic
Fingerprints of a Leonardo a remarkably
thin layers of paint
which can only be seen with a powerful
microscope
treatment
some leonardos have been found to have
as many as 30 layers of paint
many more than most painters
as she continues her restoration
Pasquale is looking for evidence of this
unusual technique
but what was Leonardo trying to achieve
with all those thin layers
just ask
ass painter
DaVinci was always looking for beauty
it's not just painting or drawing a tree
he wants to paint the perfect expression
of what a tree is
this aspiration to beauty is to me very
inspiring as an artist
Floren Farge is a painter in Dijon
France
in the tradition of the Renaissance
Farge runs an artist's Workshop
but with a Twist
hello everyone and welcome to a new
video his is a virtual one this one is
going to guide you through the entire
process of classical figure painting
Italian painters at the time mixed their
pigments into an egg base
using real egg
[Music]
but egg tempera doesn't allow as much
light to pass through it
so there is less depth in the painting
[Music]
instead Leonardo decided to use an oil
like linseed or walnut
Leonardo was using oil
because oil helps to reproduce in the
best way at the transition between light
and Shadow
gradually farge's portrait comes to life
for the finishing touches Farge
demonstrates how oil paint can be
applied very thinly to create the subtle
shading of light falling across the
human body if I want I can come back
later and put another layer on top of
that to make this transition very soft
[Music]
Leonardo's techniques are still being
taught today in his hometown of Florence
to make their paintings come alive
artists strive to capture human flesh
and the way light reveals its shape
Leonardo speaks about the Smoky
transition of light to shade
that's how we perceive in nature
problem often with photographic images
we see is that there's so much detail we
don't get the broader effect
we see life very much out of focus we
glance
other artists of the day like Sandra
Botticelli painted figures with hard
outlines
but Leonardo used his fine layers to
create soft transitions obscuring the
lines
this is
to look called spumato
from the Italian fumo or smoke
unquestionably the most famous example
of Leonardo's fumato is that enigmatic
smile of the Mona Lisa
just look at the mouth
[Music]
look at the eyes
you can't see lines
see the movement of the light
[Music]
credible and there is no comparison with
other artists at that time
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there's no Edge there at all it's all
very uncertain
this plays a psychological role of
course because he is present but somehow
not tangible
is idealized
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for Leonardo's fomato captured in two
Dimensions what he observed in the
three-dimensional world
[Music]
but in order to get the skin just right
he had to go deeper to the muscles and
tendons below
Trudy Van Houten has taught Anatomy for
30 years perfect
Leonardo da Vinci constantly inspires me
she says the sign
Anatomy is
yes please though the process often is
not nice you beautifully preserved
tiny little vessel
Leonardo dissected 30 bodies
and with no Refrigeration it would have
been especially unpleasant
the intestines would have been a
particular problem because they contain
a lot of bacteria and even after death
the intestines become inflated and
larger and larger that's where things
were going to go bad quickest and smell
the worst
it's a very messy business
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many of the drawings from Leonardo's
messy dissections today live on in the
most refined of places
Windsor Castle just outside of London
steps away from where Prince Harry and
Meghan Markle pose for their wedding
photos
more than 200 Leonardo drawings are
secured in the print room
Martin Clayton is the curator of those
drawings
[Music]
help himself making a beautiful drawing
but what most interested Leonardo was
the structure the Machinery of the body
Killer drawing is one of the finest
examples of Leonardo trying to
understand how the shoulder Works purely
in mechanical terms
there's no mystery of the body the body
is a machine that can be looked at and
analyzed in purely objective terms
beauty of Leonardo's drawings is
undeniable
but in light of all that we've learned
with the help of tools like the MRI
did he get it right
if I were asked to grade his anatomical
drawings
they would go from a to f
his drawing of the muscles of things
that he was directly observing and
giving functional sense to those I would
give an A-Plus
in terms of some of the organs I could
not do so
one of Leonardo's most ambitious
anatomical drawings is called the great
lady
it is considered a masterpiece but for
Van Houten it's a bit of a mess
I went to right away our strange
structures flying out on the sides of
the uterus
they reminded me of carrots with tops
these strange sort of horn-like
structures are ligaments observed by
Leonardo in a cow Leonardo assumed that
all mammals have the same structures
sort of feeling his way into a field
that had never been Illustrated before
Leonardo's groundbreaking dissections
certainly informed his art
he returned to this painting Saint
Jerome after 20 years
revising the neck to accurately portray
the muscle beneath
he did not revisit one of his earliest
paintings Geneva da Vinci and it shows
in what has been called the flatness of
her face
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but by the time of the Mona Lisa
Leonardo's knowledge of anatomy is
beautifully convincing
one intriguing page of Leonardo's
notebooks shows several illustrations of
human lips in exaggerated Expressions
done from dissections
and it shows how each muscle and each
nerve affects the lip
and at the very top is this tiny faint
sketch and you see the first sketch of
what will be the smile of the Mona Lisa
[Music]
anatomy and his painting technique
explain in part how Leonardo infused the
Mona Lisa with a life-like quality
but to complete the illusion he needed
to explore another area of science
how humans see
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among the many aspects in which Leonardo
was using his knowledge as a scientist
to become a better painter is Optics and
Optics is called by Leonardo perspectiva
perspective
it's basic geometry because when you
have an object with parallel lines they
will seem to vanish into a point which
is called the vanishing point
was fascinated by many aspects of how we
perceive our world
even studied the composition of air to
determine how atmosphere affects the
appearance of objects in the distance
Leonardo is trying to capture the
complexity of the world
but how can you paint something that you
cannot see like the transparency of air
Leonardo not only looked at mathematical
perspective but he looked at how colors
change as you get further away how the
sharpness of something changes as you
get further away from it
and did Leonardo also discover tricks of
perception to pull off the greatest
illusion of all
that elusive smile
she's looking out and her smile is a
reaction triggered by the arrival of
somebody this is the fiction that the
painting tries to establish
the great artists know how to draw you
in
but not to tell you what to think they
offer the tease
the ambiguity of Mona Lisa's smile is
indeed part of her Allure
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how did Leonardo pull that effect off
that is a question that intrigued
neurophysiologist Margaret Livingstone
she studies the human visual system how
our eyes and brain operate together to
make sense of the world as a
neurophysiologist I actually learn a lot
from artists because they study how we
see I study how we see
a lot of good art takes advantage of the
computations your brain makes by
exaggerating things that your visual
system finds important
human vision is among the best in the
animal kingdom
the center of our retina is packed with
special photoreceptors that enable us to
see details or sharpness
but away from the center toward the
periphery there are fewer of those types
of receptors
but not detail
okay now I want you to close your eyes
I'm going to put up two versions of the
Mona Lisa one accurate and one distorted
to illustrate livingstones enlists your
colleague Peter to see if he can spot a
fake Mona Lisa using Justice peripheral
vision okay briefly open your eyes and
look at the yellow spot and close them
right away
and point to which is the accurate
reproduction
open your eyes and see whether you chose
the correct one
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point at the real version
[Music]
can I keep that
Peter got only one of four Mona Lisas
right
and Livingstone says that's not unusual
most people don't know how bad
peripheral vision is because as soon as
something happens in their peripheral
vision they look at it and then they
bring the high resolution part of their
visual system onto it
in fact our eyes are constantly moving
three times a second filling in the
details
the effect got Livingstone thinking
could this explain why the Mona Lisa
sometimes seems to be smiling and
sometimes not
using a photo app she blurs the image
like in our peripheral vision
so I filtered the image in such a way
that it would look like what you would
see to your peripheral vision knowing
what I know about processing the result
she's grinning from ear to ear
as you look at the Mona Lisa your eye
moves around the painting
when you look away from her mouth it
enters your peripheral vision
and Mona Lisa appears to smile
but look directly at the mouth and the
smile vanishes
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she seems like she's alive because she
looks different depending on where
you're looking
Leonardo's paintings come alive because
he understands human emotion
and because he has a good feel for the
underlying science
that combination comes together year
after year as he's doing the Mona Lisa
to make it such an interactive painting
back at the Louvre synzia Pasquale has
removed the old yellowed varnish from
Bacchus
uncovering the brilliant original colors
it reveals an atmospheric perspective
that suggests Leonardo's touch
thinking of these layers of darkened and
yellow varnish we were able to
ReDiscover the original forms the the
quality of the blue It's a Wonderful
blue and you see how the painter
represents these cities with that effect
of humidity of what Leonardo called the
the atmospheric perspective
but Pasquale's investigation has also
uncovered details like the harsh shading
in the face that don't show the
characteristics fumato fingerprint of
Leonardo
I can't see the Leonardo touch
this is a little bit mechanical this
line for the shadow of this so hard you
know Leonardo don't do this
[Music]
Pasquale and the team at the Louvre have
solved a centuries-old mystery
the Bacchus cannot be attributed to
Leonardo
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but that doesn't mean he wasn't involved
very often his apprentices are actually
painting the picture so you would
conceive the general design of the work
and then the manual execution would be
delegated to members of his Workshop
[Music]
the restoration has succeeded in
bringing much of the original Beauty
back to this painting
[Music]
but it also raises an intriguing
question
should the same thing be done to the
Mona Lisa
you have to imagine that under that
vanish you could see a wonderful a blue
sky probably also the face of the hand
are more pink like natural skin
if we could just take that varnish off
we could see it the way Leonardo really
did it
but I think French governments have
fallen for Less cause than trying to
take the Mona Lisa out of circulation
and clean it
perhaps there is another way
could she be given a Digital Makeover
that is what Pascal caught is trying to
do
he has analyzed the Mona Lisa with a
remarkably powerful camera and lights
which he demonstrates using a replica
we make the measurement in the basement
of zulu inside the laboratory
it's a very emotional to have the
painting enhance without the frame you
can look at this painting under this
very intense light that reveal
everything that you cannot see usually
cots extremely detailed scan of the Mona
Lisa and his analysis of the Optics and
chemistry of paint reveal how the colors
may have changed over time
it's not just the varnish that yellows
and darkens
but the pigments and oil in the paint
itself
cots challenge is to reverse engineer
the effects of that aging
this is not just photoshopping it and
messing around with the colors which you
and I could do and get tolerable results
but this is based on pigment analysis
first Kant determines how much the
varnish has darkened
and with his computer peels it away
next he identifies with the color of
each pigment would have looked like 500
years ago and recreates them to see the
colors just as Leonardo did
for example we know that Leonardo make
the sky with white lead and LA pistachi
so we have a software that removes the
wrong colors to obtain the genuine curve
then pixel by pixel cart restores those
colors
suddenly a greenish Sky becomes
brilliantly blue
and a bit of flush comes back to Lisa's
cheeks
finally as the French say
voila
suddenly she doesn't look like the
submarine goddess
she looks as if she's in the fresh air
which is just terrific
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restoration has brought Lisa back to
life at least digitally closer to the
state that leonardos are
allowing us all to see the paintings
legendary Beauty
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science it took
the geometry and Optics of perspective
the anatomy behind her face
and the somatous soft lines
capturing the mystery and movement of
life
but even with all the modern insights
the Mona Lisa is vastly more than the
sum of her scientific parts
pinning down exactly why we are so drawn
to her ultimately remains as elusive as
her smile
three years before his death Leonardo
was invited to France to live and work
for the king
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cross the Alps by horse or mule
carrying three paintings
those paintings including the Mona Lisa
Lisa now hang at the Louvre
where the doors are about to open on the
500-year Blockbuster Leonardo exhibition
abrasion of a genius who fuse together
the worlds of Art and Science
Leonardo is an Italian Renaissance
painted but his genius is universal and
it speaks to everybody
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forget that you're looking at pigments
on a piece of wood
the idea is that you're looking at a
real living breathing being
foreign
the key to Leonardo da Vinci is that he
doesn't make a distinction between the
beauty of nature that he studies in His
science and the beauty of his art
he could have spent more time just being
a painter but had he done that he
wouldn't have been Leonardo da Vinci and
he wouldn't have painted the Mona Lisa
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thank you
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thank you
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[Applause]
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