Leonardo da Vinci and Pablo Picasso are great artists of their time, representing contrasting styles. Comparing their paintings will help better understand each work and find distinctive features. Mona Lisa (1503-1506) by da Vinci presents a High Renaissance and depicts Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy merchant.
Girl with a Mandolin (1910) by Picasso is a Cubism style and an image of Fanny Tellier. Both portraits are in oil, but Mona Lisa on wood panel and Girl with a Mandolin on canvas. One may note the preference for earthy and brown colors and pyramidal composition in these two pieces. Both artists represent the trends of their time, and as a result, the paintings are very different, and a fundamental difference is in the space.
Renaissance and Cubism arose at various times, and the historical context influenced the artists. Realism, the illusion of space, harmony, and balance, prevail in the Renaissance under the influence of humanism. Cubism, in turn, seeks experiments and rejects illusionist and old art traditions, giving a preference for multiple perspectives and flat space. For example, da Vinci uses the sfumato technique – his lines are softly blended, as if in a haze, and Picasso uses clear lines and geometric figures.
Moreover, the image of the Mona Lisa is three-dimensional, and Picasso, as a cubist, abandoned illusionism. Girl with a Mandolin is presented simultaneously from several viewpoints, front, back, or side, and her image is not three-dimensional. Thus, artists’ display of space in the painting determined the features of styles and discussed paintings.