Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa is a famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci. It is believed to be a portrait of the wife of a Florentine cloth merchant—its formal title in the Louvre, where it hangs, is Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. It is also commonly called La Giaconda. It was painted between 1503 and 1519 and has a long and adventurous history. The French people regard it as a national treasure; it is so well known that the image is found around the world on trinkets and in other artists' works.

Many mysteries surround the painting. The identity of the subject is uncertain, as is the time da Vinci painted her. The most famous mystery, however, is the reason for the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile.

The Artist

Born in Italy on April 15, 1452, Leonardo da Vinci was the illegitimate son of a lawyer. He studied as an apprentice in Florence with a painter and sculptor and became an independent master in 1478. About five years later, he began working for the ruling family in Milan.

After the French invaded Milan, da Vinci returned to Florence. Though he painted other portraits, only one from this time is known to have survived: the Mona Lisa, which he likely began while he was in Florence. He completed it about 1519 in France, where he died on May 2 of the same year.

The impact of the Mona Lisa on other artists throughout the Renaissance and beyond is evident. Artists studied da Vinci's sketches and were emboldened to become freer with their own. Many of da Vinci's students copied the Mona Lisa. The painter Raphael (1483–1520) sketched his works and used the Mona Lisa format for his Portrait of Maddalena Doni. Artists centuries later continued to heed da Vinci's advice to dress their subjects in timeless fashions rather than in the "costumes" of their day.

The Painting

Scholars are not certain the subject of the painting is Francesco del Giocondo, but the painting was begun about the time of several significant events in her family's history. She and her husband lost a daughter, who died in 1499. They had another child, a boy, in December 1502, and bought a home in 1503. The portrait may have been commissioned to recognize any or all of these events.

The portrait is oil painted on a panel of poplar wood. It is the first known Italian portrait to frame the subject closely. The subject, who is depicted from head to waist, is seated in a chair. Her left arm is resting on the arm of the chair, which is supported by spindles. Her arms and hands are well within the borders of the work. Two partial columns suggest that she is seated before a loggia, which is a covered exterior corridor. The sophisticated composition of the work—three-quarter figure, architecture framing landscape, and the perfect balance of all elements—was new to da Vinci's portraits.

Happiness, or gioconda in Italian, is the theme of the work. Da Vinci uses warm colors in the middle distance of the landscape, which includes a bridge and road—the realm of humankind. This area is at the same level as the subject's chest. The artist uses a technique of fine shading and color blending, sfumato, to emphasize the subject's hair and clothing, as well as the landscape in the distance.

For many years after its creator's death, the Mona Lisa was largely overlooked. It was displayed at Francois I's chateau Fontainebleau during the 1530s. In 1800, it was hung in the Tuileries in Napoleon Bonapart's bedroom and four years later was placed in the Louvre's Grand Gallery. During the 1860s, art critics evaluated it as an exemplary Renaissance work, but it was still not widely known.

The Myth and Mystery

The most well-known aspect of the Mona Lisa is the slight, and elusive, smile. It is evident in a viewer's peripheral vision, but when a viewer looks directly at the subject's mouth, her smile is not apparent. Da Vinci achieved this trick through his use of colors. Researchers discovered an earlier da Vinci painting of a thirteen-year-old girl, La Bella Principessa, in which he used the same sfumato technique. From a distance, the young subject appears to be smiling, but up close, her mouth is, in fact, angled down.

The painting was at the center of a twentieth-century mystery. On Monday, August 21, 1911, three men in workers' coveralls hurriedly left the closed Louvre. The following day, the museum staff realized that the Mona Lisa was gone, ripped from its glass casing. Late on Tuesday, newspapers reported the theft, and the story rocketed around the globe. People crowded the museum to stare at the blank wall. Cabaret songs, vaudeville performances, and films bemoaned the loss or chastised the museum.

The thieves—Vincenzo Perugia and brothers Vincenzo and Michele Lancelotti—realized they could not sell or trade a world-famous painting. Perugia hid the painting in a trunk. In December 1913, he took the trunk, and its hidden cargo, to Florence and visited an art dealer. Perugia was quickly arrested.

The Mona Lisa had a victory tour—it was displayed in Florence, Milan, and Rome before it returned to the Louvre. During its first two days back in France, more than 100,000 people called on La Giaconda.

Bibliography

"Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)." BBC. BBC. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic‗figures/da‗vinci‗leonardo.shtml

Scailliérez, Cécile. "Mona Lisa—Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo." The Louvre. The Louvre. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/mona-lisa-portrait-lisa-gherardini-wife-francesco-del-giocondo

Smith-Strickland, Kiona. "Scientists Discover a Second 'Mona Lisa Smile.'" D-Brief (blog) Discover Magazine. Kalmbach Publishing Co. 14 Aug. 2015. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/08/14/mona-lisa-smile/#.VlOzKtKrRdj

"Timeline: Mona Lisa." Treasures of the World. PBS. Web. 18 Dec. 2015. http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/mona‗lisa/mlevel‗1/mtimeline.html

Zug, James. "Stolen: How the Mona Lisa Became the World's Most Famous Painting." Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian Institution. 15 June 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2015. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/stolen-how-the-mona-lisa-became-the-worlds-most-famous-painting-16406234/?no-ist