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Mona Lisa
Also Known As La Gioconda (Italian); La Joconde (French)
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The Mona Lisa is a portrait in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo da Vinci, widely believed to depict Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant, and among the most recognized paintings in the world. Leonardo began the portrait around 1503 and, characteristically, continued working on it intermittently for years rather than delivering it promptly to a patron, reportedly keeping it with him until his death in France in 1519, after which it entered the French royal collection. The painting is celebrated for its sfumato technique, its subject's ambiguous, faintly smiling expression, and an atmospheric landscape background whose hazy, layered distance was itself a technical innovation. Its exact date of completion is genuinely uncertain, since Leonardo appears to have reworked it over an extended period rather than finishing it in one campaign of painting. The Mona Lisa has been housed in the Louvre in Paris since the museum's founding after the French Revolution and was the target of a widely publicized theft in 1911, an event historians credit with substantially increasing the painting's fame among the wider public.
Facts
Disputed
Year CreatedLeonardo is generally agreed to have begun the portrait around 1503, but he continued reworking it over an extended and not precisely documented period, quite possibly continuing until close to his death in 1519, so no single completion year is settled among scholars. Commissioned ByTraditionally identified as Francesco del Giocondo, a Florentine silk merchant, commissioning a portrait of his wife Lisa Gherardini 1 Vasari's account names Francesco del Giocondo as the commissioning patron, but Leonardo never delivered the panel to any patron and kept it until his death, so some scholars question whether the tradition matches the surviving painting precisely. Cross-Tradition Connections
Created By
In Form
In Movement
Sources
1. Gardner's Art Through the Ages
Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner), Cengage Learningchapter on the Italian Renaissance, section on Leonardo da Vinci
Frequently Asked Questions
What museum houses the Mona Lisa?
The Musee du Louvre, Paris.
The Mona Lisa hangs in the Musee du Louvre in Paris, part of the French national collection that traces back to the royal collection Leonardo da Vinci painted for.
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