Leonardo da Vinci Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
The greatest painting in the world is by far “La Gioconda”, known in the English-speaking world as “The Mona Lisa” by the quintessential renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci. The scholarly art world believes the sitter is Lisa del Gioncondo, the wife of a wealthy silk merchant in Florence, part of the Gherardini family of nobles and merchants.
And yet this documentary spends way too much valuable screen time on the notebooks and uncompleted works and much less time on the Mona Lisa. One unfinished work on a battle scene receive two to three times the screen-time of Mona Lisa! Ultimately it was unfinished!
I think a golden opportunity was missed. I hope it wasn’t one of those erroneous beliefs sometimes made by documentary filmmakers that everyone knows about certain things. Not everyone does, especially in an age where people don’t read books as much as they used to. Many people don’t know about Mona Lisa’s origins and history. Yes it is somewhat shrouded in mystery but even that should have been explained.
The documentary doesn’t even arrive at the Mona Lisa until near the end. There’s lots of earlier set-ups about it, where the narration says that Leonardo’s greatest work was to come. When Mona Lisa finally arrives, it is a bit of a disappointment. I wanted to hear about the original commission which was rejected by the Giocondo family. Why it was rejected by the family is nearly as interesting as why it is now considered to be possibly the greatest portrait ever created. There is some analysis by art experts about it’s greatness but I also wanted to hear about the history.
The documentary’s other shortcoming is the music. They didn’t use any music from the time of Leonardo. Lots of music from the late 15th and 16th centuries are extant and there are many recordings of this music. Instead the filmmakers opted from kind of string quartet with lots of violin solos. The violin doesn’t appear in Europe until circa 1530, about 10 years after Leonardo’s passing. And the kind of virtuoso music used in the doc doesn’t begin to be written until the very end of the 17th century, nearly 200 years after Leonardo’s lifetime.
The notebooks are essentially the star of the show. I like the notebooks but I think far too much of the doc was spent on them at the price of giving a thorough discussion about Mona Lisa. Mona Lisa is the star artwork of the Renaissance, possibly of all time. In this case she ends up in a supporting role. I found this doc to be less than satisfying.
