Unmasking the Mona Lisa: Expert claims to have discovered da Vinci's technique
Jacques Franck - a controversial figure but an acknowledged authority on Leonardo da Vinci - believes he has solved a conundrum which has defeated art experts for almost 500 years. In The Da Vinci Code, the best-selling thriller by Dan Brown, the Mona Lisa is said to contain clues to a 2,000-year-old conspiracy to deny the real character of Jesus Christ.
In real life, M. Franck believes that the painting does contain a code of a different kind - the five-centuries old secrets of a genius whose work has never been surpassed. "From the technical viewpoint, the Mona Lisa has always defeated all understanding," M. Franck said. "How did Leonardo da Vinci do it? I believe that I have the answer."
The Mona Lisa was painted in the early 16th century on a panel of poplar wood. Much of the brushwork on her face and hands is so small that it cannot be picked out by X-ray or microscope: a near-magical method of painting that Leonardo called "sfumato" or "smoky finish". The colour and shading melt into one another without visible joins or boundaries. After years of study and personal experimentation, M. Franck believes he has approximated Leonardo's method, if not the final result. His claims have been rubbished in the past by other Leonardo scholars. They say that he can produce no technical evidence to substantiate his claims.
From this month, however, M. Franck's approach has been given the official backing - or at least an official showing - by one of the leading art museums in the world, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. As part of an exhibition on Leonardo which lasts until next January, the Uffizi is displaying eight of M. Franck's works. They include six tableaux which demonstrate his theories on the different stages in the creation of one of the Mona Lisa's eyes. The Uffizi is also displaying his re-creations of two other Da Vinci paintings, including Portrait of Saint Anne from the National Gallery in London.
M. Franck, consultant scholar at the Armand Hammer Centre for Leonardo Studies in Los Angeles, believes that the Mona Lisa was painted in hundreds of sessions with a technique of ultra-fine hatching - or criss-crossing of brush strokes - some as tiny as one-fortieth of a millimetre long. He says layers of extremely diluted oil paint were piled up on one another over many years - using perhaps 30 "coats" of paint in all. For his finer work, Leonardo probably painted with a brush in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other. It was through this method, M. Franck says, that Da Vinci achieved the sublime effects which astonished and irritated fellow Italian painters at the time and have puzzled art historians ever since.