What emotions is this person feeling?
Mona Lisa
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Bright emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Quiet emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Heavy emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Sombre emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Mona Lisa
Date
c. 1503–1506
Description
Creator of the image: Leonardo da Vinci
Date of the image creation: c. 1503–1506
Medium of the image: Oil on poplar wood
Person depicted: Lisa del Giocondo
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is probably the world’s best-known portrait. Over the twentieth century it has became a pop-culture icon, an art-history classic, viewed by millions of people annually, and widely studied, parodied and reproduced. Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait depicts Lisa del Giocondo, wife of a wealthy Florentine silk-merchant, and a member of the Gherardinis family, a powerful feudal family. The Italian name of the painting, La Gioconda, is a pun that plays with the feminine form of Lisa’s married name, which transliterates as ‘the jovial one’.
The painting was long in the possession of the French absolute monarchy, up until the Revolution. Thereafter, it briefly adorned Napoleon’s bedroom wall, before ending up in the Louvre. In 1911 the artwork was stolen, generating much attention and contributing to the fame of the portrait. Leonardo’s masterpiece is now housed in a contraption that is an impressive artwork in its own right. It sits within a climate-controlled bulletproof chamber that maintains a constant level of humidity and temperature and shelters the artwork from periodic vandalism attempts.
The subtly of Lisa’s facial expression has been the subject of a huge amount of discussion. Simply summarized, commentators suggest that her expression is enigmatic.
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Choose different variables below, and see the patterns of response reflected in the circle of emotion above. Your responses are the coloured wedges. Others' responses are averaged in the spider graph of lines and dots.
