The Mona Lisa: Leonardo’s Most Famous Painting Explained

The Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, is a portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci, begun around 1503. It probably shows Lisa Gherardini, wife of the merchant Francesco del Giocondo in Florence. The painting hangs in the Louvre in Paris and is known for its soft sfumato technique and the sitter’s enigmatic gaze.

Facts

Who was she?

The name Mona is a short form of madonna, my lady, and La Gioconda plays on the word and the family name Giocondo, which also means cheerful. The art historian Giorgio Vasari already reported in the sixteenth century that Leonardo painted Francesco del Giocondo’s wife Lisa. Vasari’s account is supported by a document from 1503, in which a contemporary notes that Leonardo was working on a picture of Lisa.

Even so, Leonardo as far as we know never completed the commission. He kept the portrait and took it with him to France, where he died in 1519. King Francis I acquired it afterwards. For that reason artists through the ages have discussed other interpretations of the sitter, but most scholars hold to Lisa Gherardini.

What makes the picture special

Portraits in Florence usually showed the sitter in profile. Leonardo instead turned the body three-quarters and let the gaze meet the viewer’s. The woman sits in a pyramidal composition with her hands resting in front of her, and behind her a dreamy landscape spreads out, with a road and a bridge disappearing into haze. The landscape grows bluer and hazier the further away it lies, so-called atmospheric perspective.

The most famous feature is sfumato, the soft transitions around the corners of the mouth and eyes that make the smile seem to change depending on where one looks. Leonardo built the face from many thin oil glazes. See techniques for more about the possibilities of oil painting.

The theft that made her world famous

The Mona Lisa was respected but not the world’s most famous picture before 1911. On 21 August that year it was stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian glazier who had worked in the museum. Newspapers around the world wrote about the theft and the picture was published everywhere. Peruggia hid the painting for more than two years, but was arrested in 1913 when he tried to sell it in Florence, and it was returned to Paris.

The Mona Lisa thereby became an icon. Since then she has been referred to, parodied and imitated in countless contexts. Marcel Duchamp drew a moustache on a postcard of her in 1919, one of the best-known jokes of Dada. Andy Warhol repeated her in screen print in the 1960s, a reminder of how often the picture had been reproduced.

Seeing her today

Millions of visitors look at it every year. The painting hangs behind protective glass in a special room at the Louvre, and many are surprised that it is so small. That means the best experience is often to study it up close in high-resolution images or to compare it with other Renaissance portraits; see the portrait as a theme and the Renaissance.

The Mona Lisa should also be seen in context. Leonardo’s Last Supper rests on the same careful observation, and Raphael learned from him, for example in The School of Athens. The question of how often Leonardo used the golden ratio in the work is disputed; read the guide to the golden ratio. The period is described under the Renaissance and the Italian Renaissance.

How to recognise it

Exercise

What happened to the Mona Lisa in 1911?