‘La Gioconda’

‘La Gionconda’ or the ‘Mona Lisa’
by Leonardo da Vinci, 1503-1506

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HISTORIC, side-long, implicating eyes ;
A smile of velvet’s lustre on the cheek ;
Calm lips the smile leads upward ; hand that lies
Glowing and soft, the patience in its rest
Of cruelty that waits and doth not seek
For prey ; a dusky forehead and a breast
Where twilight touches ripeness amorously :
Behind her, crystal rocks, a sea and skies
Of evanescent blue on cloud and creek ;
Landscape that shines suppressive of its zest
For those vicissitudes by which men die. 

accessed via ‘The Poems of Michael Field’

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Arguably the most famous painting in the world (and likely still the most famous back in the Fields’ day), the ‘Mona Lisa’ or ‘La Gioconda’ is a portrait painted by Italian renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. The painting has been the source of much speculation and imaginative theories for writers of all stripes and notably possesses a strong resemblance to Renaissance era portrayals of the Virgin Mary. This would not have escaped the Fields’ attention – particularly as later Roman Catholics – but there is something more noteworthy about the painting’s inclusion within Sight and Song. As a poetry collection which tackles vision and visuality, ‘La Gioconda’ holds a special place in the collection: as Professor Margaret Livingstone of Harvard University has pointed out, the lady’s smile vanishes when observed directly. This process is part of what is known as ‘foveal‘. The human eye does not identify shadows directly in its visual process, while peripheral vision does. This creates a somewhat illusionary smile – visual trickery. Perhaps the Fields experienced some of this visual trickery when inspecting ‘La Gionconda’.

Points of interest

• Alternating perspectives
  The poem can be split into two halves. There is a subjective overview of the “cheek” and “calm lips”, the Mona Lisa “glowing” with a sly kind of “cruelty” manifesting in her devious smile playing upon Victorian visions of wildly untamed femme fatalewomen who “prey” upon unsuspecting subjects (see Linton’s essay on “Wild Women”[1]). Then we defer to the objective mountainous terrain attempting to enclose and tame her, the distant “crystal rocks” overlooking a landscape “suppressive” and all-consuming, as precarious as the lady herself with its ability to crush men – “vicissitudes by which men die”.
• Re-writing a narrative
  But yet the dangerous landscape somehow pales in comparison to the lady we are greeted with courtesy of the Fields’ ekphrastic picture they have re-painted for us with words. The Fields plant seeds of corruption and secretive intent; they interlace the narrative with gems for us to detect and suddenly acknowledge anew. In their own way, they are remaking the original narrative Da Vinci painted for us. The painting becomes a dark story and the lady’s intentions become questionable.
• Opposing binaries
  The poem is at war within itself: the Mona Lisa not only waits, eerily, to deploy her “cruelty” which contradicts her “soft” and “calm” nature, but the lashing of “sea and skies” fights to “suppress” the “zest” and therefore beauty of “cloud and creek”. Colours of day and night seem to juxtapose: “dusk” and “twilight” is contrasted by “blue” which creates a fluctuating palette.
• Veiled language
  That is to say nothing of the “implicating eyes” which seem to infer that we, the onlookers, are guilty of something – perhaps of simply seeing – and this evokes amusement from her, a “smile” which works in conjunction with a “hand that lies” seemingly in wait to do something. Is this sexual tension? Mere observation? Her apparent “cruelty” is marked by a “dusky forehead and a breast” – is she guilty of terrible thoughts in that head as well as bodily sins involving that breast? The structuring of certain corporeal elements one after the other seems purposeful. The Fields dance delicately with words, never outwardly stating the lady’s intentions but never denying possibilities, either.
• A daughter of decadence
  This lady becomes a spidery femme fatale, and her gaze is a web that ensnares us: this poem also warns the reader of the dangers of interpreting from seeing. We are not only seeing visually, but also psychologically: the subjective first half of the poem evidences this. There is undoubtedly something objectively “Historic” about her, but she also straddes then-modern beliefs in the 1880s onwards regarding decadent, sexually degenerate women harbouring precarious intentions.

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Footnotes

[1] Eliza Lynn Linton, Nineteenth Century 30, No. 176 (October 1891): 596—605.