Mona Lisa's Story

This portrait was doubtless painted in Florence, Italy, between 1503 and 1506.* It is thought to be of Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine cloth merchant named Francesco del Giocondo - hence the alternative title, La Gioconda. However, Leonardo seems to have taken the completed portrait to France rather than giving it to the person who commissioned it. It was eventually returned to Italy by Leonardo's student and heir Salai. It is not known how the painting came to be in François I's collection.

Mona Lisa, considered Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, is the most recognizable painting in the world. It is shown everyday but Tuesday at the Louvre in Paris. Crowds gather to see and photograph this surprisingly small painting. On many faces, a look of rapt wonder shows.

It was completed in the early 16th century. The mysterious, otherworldly beauty quite unlike any portrait that came before it, brought fame to the artist da Vinci. He once famously wrote that he wished "to work miracles." He developed a new artistic technique he called sfumato, or smoke. 

Over a period of several years da Vinci applied translucent glazes in delicate films, some no thicker than a red blood cell, to the painting. He probably used the tip of his finger to apply the subtle veils of color. He gradually stacked 30 of them one on top of another. Leonardo subtly softened lines and color gradations until it seemed as if the entire composition lay behind a veil of smoke. (excerpted from Scientific American magazine's March, 2013 issue-BBL)

Da Vinci's birthdate was April 15, 1452. His most famous painting, was done about 1503-1507.*

The following is from the website of the Musee du Louvre:

Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco Giocondo

 Among the aspects which remain unclear are the exact identity of the sitter, who commissioned the portrait, how long Leonardo worked on the painting, how long he kept it, and how it came to be in the French royal collection.
The portrait may have been painted to mark one of two events - either when Francesco del Giocondo and his wife bought their own house in 1503, or when their second son, Andrea, was born in December 1502 after the death of a daughter in 1499. The delicate dark veil that covers Mona Lisa's hair is sometimes considered a mourning veil. In fact, such veils were commonly worn as a mark of virtue. Her clothing is unremarkable. Neither the yellow sleeves of her gown, nor her pleated gown, nor the scarf delicately draped round her shoulders are signs of aristocratic status.

A new artistic formula

The Mona Lisa is the earliest Italian portrait to focus so closely on the sitter in a half-length portrait. The painting is generous enough in its dimensions to include the arms and hands without them touching the frame. The portrait is painted to a realistic scale in the highly structured space where it has the fullness of volume of a sculpture in the round. The figure is shown in half-length, from the head to the waist, sitting in a chair whose arm is resting on balusters. She is resting her left arm on the arm of the chair, which is placed in front of a loggia, suggested by the parapet behind her and the two fragmentary columns framing the figure and forming a "window" looking out over the landscape. The perfection of this new artistic formula explains its immediate influence on Florentine and Lombard art of the early 16th century. Such aspects of the work as the three-quarter view of a figure against a landscape, the architectural setting, and the hands joined in the foreground were already extant in Flemish portraiture of the second half of the 15th century, particularly in the works of Hans Memling. However, the spacial coherence, the atmospheric illusionism, the monumentality, and the sheer equilibrium of the work were all new. In fact, these aspects were also new to Leonardo's work, as none of his earlier portraits display such controlled majesty.