Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa: History and Curiosities
Mona Lisa is probably the most famous painting in the world and certainly the most enigmatic.
With so many mysteries surrounding the painting, the subject, and its author, it is easy to understand why it receives so much attention.
In this post, we will explore the history of the Mona Lisa, and how this Italian masterpiece ended up in France.
Wondering who the lady in the portrait is?
Don’t worry, today this mystery will be revealed, alongside other curiosities about Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
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Basic Information
Mona Lisa is on display in room 711 of the Denon Wing at Paris’ Louvre Museum and is one of the biggest reasons why most people visit the Louvre every day, to the extent that there are guided tours dedicated to seeing Mona Lisa, and her only!
The portrait is rather small, measuring just 77 x 53 cm (30 x 21 inches), and for security reasons, it is placed under shatterproof glass, to get a glimpse of the portrait can be a tough mission if you visit the Louvre during the high season.
Although there are other paintings on display in room 6, the Mona Lisa steals the spotlight. She is hung on a wall dedicated to her, and visitors will crowd around her.
Theories surrounding Mona Lisa’s identity
For years historians and researchers have been studying this masterpiece and wondering who is the lady in the portrait.
Some believe it could be a portrait of Da Vinci himself, as a female, or even a portrait of his mother.
Some theories say that the sitter for this portrait was Da Vinci’s pupil Salai, who was indeed his model for other masterpieces such as St. John the Baptist and Bacchus.
In this theory, the name “Mona Lisa” would be an anagram for “Mon Salai”
Others believe that the Mona Lisa is an androgynous portrait, depicting the beauty of man and woman mixed.
All these theories are not very well accepted, and new information discovered now gives some clue about who Mona Lisa was.
Who was Mona Lisa?
The theory most accepted by historians is that the portrait model is Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a merchant of fabrics and silk from a noble family who lived in Florence.
This explains why the portrait’s original name: “La Gioconda”, which refers to her husband’s surname.
The term “Mona” comes from the Italian “Madonna” and was used as an equivalent of the English “Lady”.
The portrait only received the name “Mona Lisa” though when the art historian and artist Giorgio Vasari, mentioned it in his book Lives of the Artists.
Lisa was a member of the Gherardini family, a noble family from Tuscany and Florence, who have lost their influence over time.
Born in Florence, her family owned some rural properties, and even though they were well off, they were not wealthy.
Lisa married in her teens to Francesco, with whom she had six children.
Her marriage might have increased her social status, but the couple lived a rather comfortable middle-class life, being considered part of the “new rich’ of the time.
Even though she was a noblewoman, she is depicted as a rather ordinary woman, in a simple house dress, and a thin veil covering her hair.
Francesco is believed to have died due to the plague of 1538. Lisa also fell ill and her daughter took her to the convent for treatment.
Some believe that she eventually died in 1542, but some accounts say that Lisa lived until 1551 when she must have been 71 or 72 years old.
💵How much is the Mona Lisa worth today? The Mona Lisa painting is protected by a French heritage protection law that makes it impossible to sell, but it is estimated that the work’s market value is US$2.5 billion. This estimate is from 2014.
Why Mona Lisa doesn’t have eyebrows?
Shaving one’s eyebrow was considered a custom of the high-class ladies during the Renaissance, and this practice can be seen in other portraits as well.
However, scans have shown that Mona Lisa did have eyebrows and eyelashes when it was first painted.
It all vanished with time, though, due to poor restorations.
What’s up with her smile?
“Mona Lisa Smile” that’s a famous expression.
Mona Lisa has this intriguing smile on her face, which we don’t really understand the meaning, maybe she is happy, maybe she is flirting, who knows, maybe she is just trying to be nice.
Some say that Leonardo hired a group of musicians to play while she sat for the portrait, as a means to make the long hours less tedious. Maybe she was smiling at the situation?
It is hard to know the answer to this, Renaissance portraits were usually very sober, created to show power and influence, it was very unusual for a Renaissance portrait to depict a person smiling.
What is in the background of the Mona Lisa?
For many years, researchers have tried to decipher where the landscape painted by Leonardo Da Vinci, which served as the background for the Mona Lisa, was located, and whether the landscape was indeed real, or just an imaginary one.
The site has been identified as a panorama seen from a window of Malaspina dal Verme Castle, located in the town of Bobbio, near Milan, in northern Italy.
Da Vinci lived in the region from 1482 to 1499, when he worked for the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza.
The castle with its window overlooking the panorama still exists today.
Why did Leonardo da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa?
Lisa’s husband, Francesco requested the portrait in 1503, Lisa was 24 years old at the time.
During this time, portraits were still rare. Only the wealthiest families or royals were able to pay for them.
Da Vinci then began painting the Mona Lisa in October 1503, and it was probably finished in 1506.
However, Leonardo Da Vinci continued to retouch the portrait frequently until 1517.
The painting was never delivered to Francesco del Giocondo. Some believe that with Da Vinci’s delay, the merchant gave up on the purchase.
Mona Lisa ended up becoming almost an obsession for Leonardo Da Vinci, who kept adding more details year after year.
Records say that he would roll it up, and take the painting with him, wherever he went.
Da Vinci’s innovative technique
The technique used by da Vinci in the Mona Lisa portrait is known as Sfumato.
It creates a smooth gradient between tones, without lines or borders.
To achieve this effect, Leonardo used both brushes and his finger to blend the colors and make the strokes unnoticeable.
The technique was famous in the Renaissance era, but Da Vinci was the most prominent artist in the technique.
This same technique can be seen in other Da Vinci paintings displayed at the Louvre as well.
Once you get in front of the Mona Lisa, you will notice that she is always looking at the viewer, despite where he is.
This happens due to the positions of her eyes.
For this technique, Da Vinci positioned her irises at the side of her eyes, creating the effect of her eyes following the viewer.
Portraits back then used to depict only the bust of the subject.
Mona Lisa was the first one to include the subject’s hands and twist the head to the viewer, giving a much more natural image.
How did the Mona Lisa end up in France?
In 1506, after an invitation from the French King Francis I, Da Vinci moved to the Loire Valley to work in the king’s court and took the Mona Lisa with him.
King Francis, I bought the portrait in 1518 from Da Vinci himself, or after his death, from his assistant Salai, who some believe received the Mona Lisa as a gift from his master.
The king kept the painting at the Palace of Fontainebleau, and later, King Louis XIV moved it to the Palace of Versailles.
After the French Revolution, the painting was then moved to the Louvre, first to the apartments of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and then to the exhibition galleries, where it was displayed in a common corridor, along with other works.
Read: Louvre Museum: Masterpieces you can’t miss
👉 Did you know? Mona Lisa has only been out of France twice since Da Vinci took her there. The first was at the request of the then-First Lady of the United States, Jackie Kennedy. Mona Lisa was shipped to the US, in a first-class private cabin, to be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Ten years after that, the Mona Lisa was exhibited in Japan. Today the painting can only be seen in France, as travel was banned for our muse, Mona Lisa.
Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?
On August 21, 1911, everything changed for the Mona Lisa. After 400 years of silent existence, the painting was stolen from the Louvre museum by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian who had previously worked at the Louvre.
The theft was only noticed 28 hours later.
The painting was missing for 2 years, during which many people investigated the house, including the painter Pablo Picasso and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
Mona Lisa was found on December 13, 1913, under a hotel bed in Florence.
Vincenzo said that his act was patriotic and that he intended to take back to Italy the works of art stolen by Napoleon Bonaparte.
Mona Lisa, however, had not been brought to France as booty, but acquired by King Francis I, as mentioned above.
The coverage of the case was so much, and so long and epic, that it ended up turning Mona Lisa into a celebrity.
Today it is exposed behind armored glass to prevent possible theft.
Are there more Portraits of the Mona Lisa?
While the original portrait is displayed at the Louvre Museum in Paris, there are many copies and replicas of the Mona Lisa around the world, most of them are unimportant.
But one of them called researchers eyes. After a restoration in 2012, the Prado Museum found out that their copy of the Mona Lisa, which until then was not very important, turned out to be the earliest copy ever made of La Giaconda.
The copy was made in Leonardo Da Vinci’s studio, probably by one of his pupils. Salai or Melzi, who most likely sat beside Leonardo and copied his artwork, stroke by stroke.
After this restoration, the Mona Lisa of Prado is much brighter than the Mona Lisa of the Louvre, assuming its original colors, and giving us a glimpse of how the original work should have looked like when first painted.
Some also believe that the original Mona Lisa is actually a copy of an early one. There is another portrait of the same Lisa Gherardini painted a decade before the Louvre’s portrait.
In it, Lisa is depicted as a much younger lady, but besides that, the two portraits are pretty much the same, the young girl is sitting, her hands are shown, she wears a simple dress and behind her, we can see a landscape.
The painting is known as the Isleworth Mona Lisa, as the English connoisseur Hugh Blaker acquired it in 1913 after being brought to England in 1780, and put on display at Blaker’s studio in Isleworth.
The painting is known nowadays as the “Earlier Mona Lisa“.
Although the authorship of this artwork has not been proven, it is well known that Da Vinci always made at least two versions of each of his paintings.
Taking this into consideration, and analyzing the painting itself, it is not hard to believe that the Earlier Mona Lisa is another of Da Vinci’s portraits.
📌How many paintings did Leonardo Da Vinci paint? Despite his fame as a painter, Da Vinci painted only 20 paintings in his lifetime. Of this, Mona Lisa was the only one whose authorship never left the researchers in doubt. Check the list of Da Vinci’s most famous paintings here.
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