If you ever visit the Louvre in Paris, forget the Mona Lisa! She will be buried deep in tourists, most of whom have their backs turned to her as they take selfies with the painting dimly behind them.

 

Instead you can enjoy a far more beautiful portrait by Leonardo all to yourself. She is found just a few steps away in the long gallery that lies behind the huge Marriage at Cana painting by Veronese that faces the Mona Lisa. She is La Belle Ferronnière, the beautiful daughter of an ironmonger.

 

Perhaps the first thing that strikes you is the purity and simplicity of the image. Almost the silence of it.  Her flesh tones are in strong contrast with the dark, uncluttered background, while the crimson of her dress makes a rich but unostentatious statement.

 

Leonardo’s composition is based on sweeping curved lines, The gorgeous arabesque curves of her hairline, sweeping down both sides of her face from her parting; the thin but powerful line of her headband - almost straight, but not quite; the lines of her neck and shoulders and the way her dress falls over her shoulders, and finally the lines of the decorative cords around her neck.

In complete contrast to the clarity of those lines is the gentle, three dimensional modelling of her skin tones. Leonardo was a master of this technique called sfumato. The word comes from the Italian word for smoke: fumo, and he described it as painting ‘without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke’. Our painting shows the most subtle gradations of tone from lightness into shade. It is so soft that the work of the brush seems to disappear.

 

Her eyes certainly hold our gaze with a steady stillness. They are beautifully modelled, free from artificiality, with gentle shading beneath the brows and the lower lids. But they don’t look at us. They gaze just beyond us to the right as if there is a third person present. They are calm, unafraid with no trace of flirtation.

 

Her lips, too, are beautifully modelled. I don’t detect a different expression in either side, but the softness of the shading in the corners of her mouth is sfumato at its best.

 

Although the painting seems motionless, there is movement in it. It follows a technique called contrapposto. Invented by the ancient Greeks originally in full length sculpture where weight is thrown onto one leg, putting a twist in the hips, a twist is carried on into the upper body. Here the lady’s body is facing to the left, but her head turns gently towards us and then her eyes turn still further until they are looking slightly to our right. It is gentle, unforced, but gives the composition a sense of living movement.

 

But what I love most of all lies in the underside of her jaw. Leonardo knew that there can be  light in the heart of every shadow. Light that is reflected from another surface. Here the light has bounced off the crimson fabric of her dress into the shadow of her jawline, bringing her jaw forward from her neck. It is a light warmed by the fabric and its redness gives the impression of blood pulsating just under her skin. As if, after over 430 years, she is still alive!

 

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