Another Ambiguous Expression by Leonardo da Vinci

The Mona Lisa (1503–6) is probably the most celebrated example of ambiguous expression in art. Soranzo and Newberry (2015) demonstrated that a similar ambiguity can be perceived also in La Bella Principessa (1495–6), another portrait credited to Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) by many. The paper aims to show that an ambiguous expression can be perceived in a further painting attributed (although not unanimously) to Leonardo: The Lady with Dishevelled Hair, or La Scapigliata. An experiment was conducted whereby participants rated on a 7-point Likert scale the perceived level of contentment of La Scapigliata and that of a comparable painting created by Andrea di Cione, alias Il Verrocchio. The two artworks were presented in random order to two groups of participants. One group could see the artworks from Close (0.6m) whilst the other group from Far (6m) from a Close (0.6 m) or Far (6 m) condition. Results show that the change of distance affected the perceived level of contentment of Leonardo’s figure but not that of Verrocchio’s. Specifically, whilst both artworks received similar ratings of contentment from the close-up condition, La Scapigliata was perceived to be more content from afar. It is concluded that La Scapigliata exhibits an ambiguous expression, and that this ambiguity is similar to the one observed in the Mona Lisa and La Bella Principessa. This result can be only partially interpreted within the spatial frequency hypothesis advanced by Livingstone (2000) and shows that a phenomenological account of Leonardo’s work might be more suited to capture the full extent of the phenomenon. Specifically, it is suggested that the principles of perceptual belongingness (Wertheimer, 1923) may need to be considered to fully capture the extent of the ambiguity depicted by Leonardo.