The Renaissance polymath, painter of the Mona Lisa
The very embodiment of the Renaissance "universal man" — painter, anatomist, engineer, inventor in one. He finished very few paintings, yet nearly every one became immortal: the smile of the Mona Lisa, the composition of The Last Supper rewrote Western painting. His invention of "sfumato" softened outlines like smoke, giving figures, for the first time, a breath-like reality. His notebooks hold flying machines and anatomical studies alongside the most obsessive study of light and shadow.
The Mona Lisa has held people spellbound for five centuries largely because of that expression you can never quite call a smile. With layer upon layer of the thinnest glaze, Leonardo softened the transitions at the mouth and eyes until the brushstrokes all but vanish — the harder you look to know what she is thinking, the more the smile slips away. This is sfumato at its height, and his understanding that the human heart cannot be fully painted.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.