Leonardo Da Vinci is a renaissance era painter. He learnt the art of painting from Verrocchio of Florentine. The portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci depicts the head of a very old man painted with a red color.
The old man has long hair while his big beard extends from his wide shoulders up to his chest. His eyes are oblique behind the eye brows staring at the person looking at it. The folds of his long face show that the person lacks teeth.
Documentation of the renaissance era does not show any other artists who had such long hair or beard. Hence, the person’s long hair gives the portrait a very unique feature.
It is simple for a viewer to notice that the portrait looks far ahead and not at the person looking at it. Art should be a media of communication in informing an audience the ideas that the artist thought of when creating such a master piece.
Artists make use of paintings as a medium through which they communicate their ideas to the rest of us. They make use of color to inform the community.
In this regard, painting is a medium of communication between a painter and the society. Hence, it is very easy for a person looking at the Da Vinci portrait to understand its inert meaning.
The painting has raised too much controversy. Some people are of the view that the person in the portrait is too old to be Da Vinci. He died aged 67 but the picture shows a much older person who fails to match him. In fact, other people have suggested that it is Da Vinci’s dad.
There is great disparity between the age that Da Vinci died of and the age of the person on the portrait. This has offered critics a platform with which to suggest that Da Vinci could have painted this portrait after he had quit his career.
Essentially, the portrait is of a stressed man who for his age should not have such an old face. This is indicative of the fact that life must have been difficult for him then. (Livingstone 1264). He appears to be thinking of days to come. This could signify a foresight of art in coming generations.
The art of painting has to be passed from one generation to the other. Hence, for the picture to gaze ahead in such fashion, one can conclude that the painter had a desire to pass the power of art to the on coming generations.
Leonardo was a highly respected artist of the renaissance period. To ensure that he did not die with the richness of art, he indeed left the world immense history which still lives.
From the tributes of portraits like Mona Lisa’s and his own portrait, painters of the modern world are informed of the path that art has gone through from the renaissance period. Da Vinci envisioned that painting would further develop in the generations to come.
This gave him the tenacity to survive through difficult circumstances. Such zeal pushes modern day artists to develop their painting skills so that when they are faced with the chance to pass over to the next generation, they do it as gracefully as Da Vinci.
Painting is indeed a piece of art that shows life of a certain generation. In this case, Da Vinci’s portrait tells us about how creative and imaginative artists were in the renaissance period.
The use of such nice color in the picture shows how artists did their paintings many years ago. They developed paintings which lived on after their demise. This was a good legacy for an artist and the principles he believed in.
Da Vinci is still regarded as the one who painted the best portraits ever in history. Nevertheless, experts have not been able to identify how he looked like when he was young since he certainly left no portraits of his youthful years.
The only portrait that is the case for this essay is the one depicting his elderly years. A point to note is that the person in the portrait has a Greek nose. He also has long hair and an extensive beard.
These elements have made artists argue whether the picture is Da Vinci. Da Vinci was an Italian. Why then did he paint a portrait of himself having a Greek nose? Such kinds of faces were only related to apostles.
This gives a differing viewpoint concerning the veracity of the portrait. There are some artists who claim that the self portrait could have been Da Vinci’s effort in painting Thomas the apostle but not himself.
Thomas had a doubting mind according to the bible. Da Vinci is also said to have been a person who loved asking so many questions and would not easily conform to what he was told by others.
It is for this reason that he could have been related to the biblical doubting Thomas.
Works Cited
Livingstone, Margaret. “Was Rembrandt stereoblind?” New England Journal of Medicine. (2004) 351:1264-1265