Aesthetic Experience and Critical Analysis Essay

Aesthetic Experience and Critical Analysis Essay 

Student’s full Name
Name of the Museum	The Louvre Museum
Location of the Museum	Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, France
Date of Museum visit	10/31/2021
Digital Photograph of Dated Receipt or Dated Ticket	(“Explore | The palace | From the ‘Mona Lisa’ to ‘The Wedding Feast at Cana’”, 2021)

ARTWORK INFORMATION

Title	Mona Lisa
Artist	Leonardo da Vinci
Creation Date	1503
Discipline Classification	It is attributed to visual art
Genre, time period, Style	It is a portrait painting; the period of this painting is that it belongs to the Renaissance period. The Italian Renaissance period was a stretch in history that essentially covered the period between the 14th century and the 17th century, whereby it was marked by a culture that spread throughout Europe and which marked the cessation of the Middle Ages to the modern era (Emeni, 2015).
Medium	Mona Lisa painting is an oil painting on a poplar wood panel, to present a woman in a portrait that covers the half body, with a backdrop of a far-off landscape. Intriguingly, this simple description portrays Leonardo’s achievement. Besides, this three-quarter-view approach whereby the sitter’s position towards the viewer quickly became the convention for every portrait used over time until well into the 21st century. The sculptural face depicts Leonardo’s skillful handling of fine shading, further revealing his potent comprehension of the skull beneath the skin and the notion of musculature. Besides, the medium shows the delicately painted veil, the very finely wrought tresses, as well as the cautious rendering of the folded fabric that demonstrates the painter’s inexhaustible patience. The oil painting medium on the wooden poplar panel shows the sensuous curves of the hair of the sitter and the clothing, which are echoed in shape into the background of the rivers and valleys. With this knowledge in mind, it suffices to maintain that this painting was painted using oil paints on a poplar wood panel that measured 30 and 20, tall and wide, respectively (Britannica, 2020). A section of scholars has maintained that this painting is in good shape, keeping its age in mind. The poplar panel crucially depicts some evidence of warping from the resistance to the original frame and the braces that the early restorers added.
Size and Effect of Size	Over the course of hundreds of years, many copies have been made in an effort to replicate this original work of art belonging to Leonardo da Vinci. The ‘earlier Mona Lisa’ is quite large, with a height of c. 86cm and c. 64.5cm in width. The wood panel of the Mona Lisa painting in the Louvre is quite uneven, whereby its width varies between 53.4cm at the bottom and 53.3 on the top. Its height is 79. 1cm on its left side, and 79.4cm on the middle part.
Social, Historical, and Cultural origin	Doubtless, the Mona Lisa painting has a social significance to society, in that it tells a story to the audience without necessarily using words. In this case, it relays the symbolism of Da Vinci’s art and the aspect of revolution that he brought to paintings. It is imperative to understand that the painting of this work of art began in 1503, whereby the painter, Leonardo da Vinci used numerous layers of thin oil glazes at diverse times. The present tiny cracks on the painting, the craquelure, are not a rough patch but soft to the touch. Da Vinci’s range of curiosity was unmatched, winning him numerous titles such as “the universal man” (Janaro & Altshuler, 1993). Undoubtedly, the Mona Lisa gradually had a cultural shift to symbolize the notion of renaissance. It is a likely portrait of a merchant’s wife in Florence, and who’s gaze may have been intended for her husband, and somehow the portrait never made it to her husband and the painter kept it with him as he went about to work for King Francis I, who later kept it for himself. It is also important to understand that the Mona Lisa profoundly influenced the Renaissance period by revolutionizing portrait painting in contemporary society. As such, this three-quarter pose became the standard upon which all paintings were made. The preliminary drawings that Leonardo used are those that other artists used to make freer painting studies. As such, it is through the painting that Da Vinci’s Milanese works were known all through Florence, bolstering his reputation and artistic stature. The cultural impact of the Mona Lisa is that it influenced the fashion trend through which artists used to dress their subjects. Speaking on his paintings and the aspect of dressing the paintings with fashion, Leonardo said that painters must refrain from using the costumes of the era they were living in, apart from using it on the tombstone, lest they be scorned by the coming generations that may laugh at the mad fashions of their ancestors. As such, it explains why the painting of the Mona Lisa depicts this notion of the painter’s treatise because the woman in the painting is seen dressed in a colored shift that was loosely pleated at the back, rather than the tight clothes, which were widely popular by then.
Western or Non-­western Humanities Classification	Undoubtedly, it is a Western humanities classification because generally, western humanities offer diverse art styles, including the Baroque, realism, and the notion of romanticism (Edewor, 2015). As such, it is clear that it lies under the Western classification, in that it has become an influence during the Renaissance period, influencing Western civilization, and thus a large part of our general Western culture.

References

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2020, December 4). Mona Lisa. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mona-Lisa-painting

Edewor, U. N. (2015). Gani Odutoku’Dialogu with Mona Lisa: Interrogating Implications of Euro-African Interface. AFRREV IJAH: An International Journal of Arts and Humanities, 4(1), 241-251.

Emeni, O. (2015). Aina Onabolu’s Dr. Sapara and Reverse Appropriation. Arts and design studies.

Explore | The palace | From the ‘Mona Lisa’ to ‘The Wedding Feast at Cana’. Le Louvre. (2021). https://www.louvre.fr/en/explore/the-palace/from-the-mona-lisa-to-the-wedding-feast-at-cana.

Janaro, R. P., & Altshuler, T. C. (1993). The Art of being Human: the Humanities as a Technique for Living. HarperCollins College.

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Instructions
Aesthetic Experience and Critical Analysis Essay VIRTUAL Assignment

Grading

See the Aesthetic Experience Essay Rubric.

Materials

Use all of the resources in Course Content as well as your textbook and additional research sources to guide your writing. Follow the prompts in the appropriate worksheet from the Aesthetic Experience Materials area in this module. Apply the skills you’ve developed throughout the course in researching and evaluating works from the humanities.

Background

Throughout the course, you have applied the practice of critical analysis to a variety of works from the humanities. This assignment is the capstone of the lessons and activities you’ve completed in this course.

For this assignment, you will VIRTUALLY attend an art museum. [Note: Cinema/film is not an option for this assignment].

If, for some reason, you choose to attend a museum or event “in person”, you are assuming all risks and responsibilities associated with attending. You are in no way “required” to go anywhere “in person” for this course for the Aesthetic Experience Research Essay or for any other reason.

Instructions

Before the Experience (Do These Steps EARLY in the Semester)

1. View the Aesthetic Experience and Perception video and read the associated transcript in the Aesthetic Experience Materials area of this module.

2. Look through the pre-approved list of VIRTUAL art museums in the Aesthetic Experience Materials area of this module and choose your experience.

3. Plan for and schedule the time and date to do your VIRTUAL chosen experience.

4. After Virtually Viewing the museum (or optionally attending “in person”), compose a research essay pertaining to this aesthetic experience based on the detailed instructions in the Aesthetic Experience worksheet. Incorporate terms from the list at the end of your worksheet.

5. Conduct the appropriate research to support your responses to the worksheet prompts. Be sure to cite all sources carefully. For this assignment, you are required to use and cite a minimum of five quality sources (including the precise link to your work of art). Those five sources should include:

(1) the textbook;

(2) the website of the museum that houses your piece;

(3) the precise link to the work of art itself;

(4 and 5) TWO quality research sources pertaining to your piece, its artist, style, and/or historical/cultural contexts. To find these sources, please try using Google Scholar and/or our college library.

Be sure to cite all your sources in proper MLA or APA format, including the event or work of art itself. Your complete “Works Cited” should be placed at the end of your third essay prompt; in other words at the bottom of the page on which you write your responses to the third essay prompt (before the Glossary section).”

6. Finally, submit your completed Aesthetic Experience Research Essay Worksheet to this Dropbox folder. (Note: Be sure that the completed worksheet REMAINS in a WORD FORMAT and that your responses reflect in-depth critical evaluation and analysis based on research with careful editing/proofreading and research citations before submitting.)