Why is the Mona Lisa worth an estimated $850 million?
You aren't buying a portrait, you're buying an embodied piece of Da Vinci.
In this thread:
- Why he is a Renaissance icon.
- Pigment and Optical science used in the Mona Lisa.
- The Billionaire Art Market for Leonardo.
Leonardo’s breadth of expertise is what makes him a true “Renaissance Man”
The Mona Lisa reflects the work of an artist and an assiduous scientist.
Perspective, optics, anatomy, light, geology, botany.
Masterpieces are more about what went into them than what's plainly visible.
Microscopic analyses of the paint layers show 30+ microscopically thin glazes of translucent paint.
A multi-spectral analysis exhibits at least 3 different versions underneath the final one.
Da Vinci didn't just paint the Mona Lisa.
He painted it over and over again.
Look at your eyes in the mirror.
There's no line where your eyelid ends and your cheek begins.
Mona Lisa's eyes don't have a clear outline, the way most sketch eyes do.
It has a subtle gradation of light and shadow.
Similar to how the human eye observes in natural light.
Mona Lisa’s smile hides in sfumato’s soft glazes.
When you look directly and focus, sharp lines dominate visual processing and she seems neutral.
When you look at a glance, soft lines dominate her image and she looks like she's smiling.
Reproducing this effect forced Leonardo to really understand human sight.
Peripheral vision is of drastically different quality than direct vision.
He leveraged this distinction in our visual processing and engineered a way for the painting to become alive.
Da Vinci's notebooks capture the obsession it required to draw and paint the world's most famous smile.
He dissected 30 human cadavers, peeling back their skin and tracing every nerve and muscle.
Leonardo created his unique medium, mixing specific ratios of walnut oil, linseed oil, and pine resin.
This formula gave his paints transparency, but extended drying time from hours to WEEKS.
That's partly why the Mona Lisa took him 4-16 years.
Perfection takes time.
Early Renaissance artists used egg yolk-based tempera paints.
But Leonardo sought 3D depth in 2D art, using thin oil layers & atmospheric perspective.
He used minerals like:
- Lapis lazuli for blue.
- Cinnabar for vermilion.
- Lead for white.
We have incredible insight into Da Vinci's brain because 7,000 pages worth of his ideas, questions, observations, drawings, and handwritten notes are still preserved.
They're split into 6 codices.
Bill Gates bought the Codex Leicester for $30.2M.
It's not Mona Lisa in the Mona Lisa, but the Da Vinci in Mona Lisa that makes it worth $850M+.
Yes, it is a painting.
But, it captures Da Vinci's breadth of curiosities spanning frontier science and art.
The same values that make him the quintessential 'Renaissance Man' are embodied in the Mona Lisa.
For what is arguably the most valuable art in the history of the world, there is no fair price. There is only a market price.
In-demand scarcity largely makes for the value of things. And there has never been a more curious and talented explorer.
There's no other person who can do a Mona Lisa.
The market knows this.
A whole business is built around it.
9M people per year visit the Louvre; 80% do so because of the Mona Lisa.
If tickets cost $25, the Mona Lisa generates $180M/year.
At a 25% profit margin, it generates $45M/year in profit.
What multiple would you pay for it?
Cross-references and mental models don't suffice.
There is no method that can capture the Mona Lisa's true value.
It might be the only asset that eludes even attempts of economic calculus.
This is the result of Da Vinci's singularity.
Hope you found the thread interesting and make sure to share if you have!
I write about business, books, and philosophy.
You can follow me at @ruchirjajoo to find interesting reads.
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