Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa

Italian: La Gioconda, French: La Joconde
Artist	Leonardo da Vinci
Year	c. 1503–1519
Type	Oil on poplar
Dimensions	77 cm × 53 cm (30 in × 21 in)
Location	Musée du Louvre, Paris

The Mona Lisa (La Gioconda or La Joconde, or Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo^[1]) is a half-length portrait of a woman by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, which has been acclaimed as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world."^[2]

mona lisa article history and painting published

The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a poplar panel, and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506.^[1] It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.^[1] The ambiguity of the subject's expression, frequently described as enigmatic,^[3] the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modeling of forms and the atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work.^[1]

Subject and title

A note by Agostino Vespucci 1503 in a book at Heidelberg University states that Leonardo was working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.

The painting's title Mona Lisa stems from a description by Giorgio Vasari: "Leonardo undertook to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife...."^[4][5] In Italian, ma donna means my lady. This became madonna, and its contraction mona. Mona was thus a polite form of address, similar to Ma’am, Madam, or my lady in English. Though traditionally spelled "Mona" (as used by Vasari^[4]), in modern Italian, this short form of madonna is now usually spelled Monna. The title is therefore sometimes given as Monna Lisa, but this is rare in English. "Monna Lisa" is the normal spelling in modern Italian.

Vasari's account of the Mona Lisa comes from his biography of Leonardo published in 1550, 31 years after the artist's death, and which has long been the best known source of information on the provenance of the work and identity of the sitter. That Leonardo painted such a work, and its date, were confirmed in 2005 when a scholar at Heidelberg University discovered a margin note in a volume of Cicero printed in 1477. It had been written by Leonardo's contemporary Agostino Vespucci and likened Leonardo to Apelles, who is mentioned in the text. The margin note states that Leonardo was at that time working on a painting of Lisa del Giocondo and is dated October 1503.^[6] At his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant Salai owned a portrait named in his personal papers as la Gioconda which had been bequeathed to him by the artist. Italian for "jocund", "happy" or "jovial", La Gioconda ("the jocund one") was a pun on the feminine form of the sitter's married name Giocondo.^[7][8] In French, the title La Joconde has the same meaning.

The sitter, Lisa del Giocondo,^[9][10] was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany and the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo.^[7] The painting is thought to have been commissioned for their new home and to celebrate the birth of their second son, Andrea.^[11]

Over the years there have been several alternative views. Some scholars have argued that Lisa del Giocondo was the subject of a different portrait, identifying at least four other paintings as the Mona Lisa referred to by Vasari.^[12][13] Several other individuals have been proposed as the subject of the painting^[14] including Isabella of Naples,^[15] Cecilia Gallerani,^[16] Costanza d'Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla‎,^[14] Isabella d'Este, Pacifica Brandano or Brandino, Isabela Gualanda, Caterina Sforza, and Leonardo himself.^[17][18] Today the consensus of art historians is that the painting depicts Lisa del Giocondo, which has always been the traditional view.^[6]

History

Self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, executed in red chalk sometime between 1512 and 1515

Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, Italy.^[19] According to Leonardo's contemporary, Giorgio Vasari, "...after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished...."^[5] Leonardo, later in his life, is said to have regretted "never having completed a single work".^[20]

In 1516 Leonardo was invited by King François

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