LEONARDO da Vinci

(b. 1452, Vinci, d. 1519, Cloux, near Amboise)

Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)

c. 1503-5
Oil on panel, 77 x 53 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

According to Vasari, this picture is a portrait of Mona or Monna (short for Madonna) Lisa, who
was born in Florence in 1479 and in 1495 married the Marquese del Giocondo, a Florentine of
some standing - hence the painting's other name, `La Gioconda'. This identification, however, has
sometimes been questioned.
Leonardo took the picture with him from Florence to Milan, and later to France. It must have
been this portrait which was seen at Cloux, near Amboise, on 10 October 1517 by the Cardinal of
Aragon and his secretary, Antonio de Beatis. There is a slight difficulty here, however, because
Beatis says that the portrait had been painted at the wish of Giuliano de Medici. Historians have
attempted to solve this problem by suggesting that Monna del Giocondo had been Giuliano's
mistress.
The painting was probably acquired by François I from Leonardo himself, or after his death from
his executor Melzi. It is recorded as being at Fontainebleau by Vasari (1550), Lomazzo (1590),
Peiresc, and Cassiano del Pozzo (1625). The latter relates that when the Duke of Buckingham
came to the French court to seek the hand of Henrietta of France for Charles I, he made it known
that the King was most anxious to own this painting; but the courtiers of Louis XIII prevented him
from parting with the picture. It was put on exhibition in the Musée Napoléon in I8o4; before that, in
1800, Bonaparte had it in his room in the Tuileries.
From the beginning it was greatly admired and much copied, and it came to be considered the
prototype of the Renaissance portrait. It became even more famous in 1911, when it was stolen
from the Salle Carrée on 21 August 1911 by Vicenzo Perrugia, an Italian workman. In 1913 it was
found in Florence, exhibited at the Uffizi, then in Rome and Milan, and brought back to Paris on 31
December in the same year.
This figure of a woman, dressed in the Florentine fashion of her day and seated in a visionary,
mountainous landscape, is a remarkable instance of Leonardo's sfumato technique of soft, heavily
shaded modeling. The Mona Lisa's enigmatic expression, which seems both alluring and aloof, has
given the portrait universal fame.
Reams have been written about this small masterpiece by Leonardo, and the gentle woman who
is its subject has been adapted in turn as an aesthetic, philosophical and advertising symbol,
entering eventually into the irreverent parodies of the Dada and Surrealist artists.
Vasari relates that Leonardo worked on it for four years without being able to finish it; yet the
picture gives the impression of being completely realized. The dates suggested for it vary between
1503 and 1513, the most widely accepted being 1503-05.
 Taking a living model as his point of departure, Leonardo has expressed in an ideal form the
concept of balanced and integrated humanity. The smile stands for the movement of life, and the
mystery of the soul. The misty blue mountains, towering above the plain and its river, symbolize the
universe.