Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa
The Mona Lisa is Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of a Florentine woman, painted in oil on a poplar panel around 1503. Vasari identified the sitter as Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, which is how the work became known in Italian as La Gioconda. Leonardo broke with the stiff profile portraits common in the fifteenth century, turning his sitter into a relaxed three-quarter pose and setting her against an atmospheric, mountainous landscape. He built the picture from thin, translucent layers of oil glaze rather than outlined forms, a technique called sfumato, which he described as rendering things without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke. The technique gives the face its soft transitions of light and shadow and produces the shifting expression that has fascinated viewers for five centuries. Leonardo kept the painting rather than delivering it to a patron, and it eventually entered the French royal collection after his death in France, from where it passed to the Louvre.
Where it is held
The painting is held at the Louvre in Paris, where it has hung, aside from the 1911 to 1913 theft, since it entered the French royal collection after Leonardo's death. Its exact date of arrival at the Louvre is not firmly established.
Sfumato and Technique
Leonardo built the face from layers of thin oil glaze instead of outlined forms, blending tone into tone until the edges dissolved, a method he called painting without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke. The same soft transition of light governs the hands, which Leonardo rendered with unusual anatomical precision after years of studying cadavers.
Theft and Fame
On 21 August 1911 an Italian handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia hid overnight in the Louvre and walked out with the panel hidden under his smock; it was recovered in Florence two years later. The theft, as much as any formal quality, is often credited with turning a respected Renaissance portrait into the most famous painting in the world.
Common questions
Where is the Mona Lisa on display?
The Mona Lisa hangs in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. It has been there, aside from a two-year absence after its 1911 theft by museum handyman Vincenzo Peruggia, since it entered the French royal collection following Leonardo's death in France.
Who is the woman in the Mona Lisa?
Giorgio Vasari identified her as Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, which is why the French call the painting La Gioconda. She married in 1495 and was probably in her mid-twenties when Leonardo began the portrait around 1503.
Why is the Mona Lisa considered so significant?
The painting set a new standard for Renaissance portraiture, replacing the stiff profile view with a relaxed three-quarter pose and placing the sitter's hands prominently in the frame. Leonardo's sfumato technique, building form from layers of glaze rather than outline, became one of the most studied methods in Western painting.
Take it home.
Shop this print of "Mona Lisa" →