Mona Lisa – The Women with a Mysterious smile
Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
Location: The Louvre (since 1797)
Dimensions: 2' 6" x 1' 9" (77 cm x 53 cm)
Created: 1503–1517
Subject: Lisa Del Giocondo
Period: The Renaissance
The Mona Lisa (Italian: Monna Lisa [ˈmɔnna ˈliːza] or La Gioconda [la dʒoˈkonda], French: La Joconde) or La Gioconda 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".
The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco Del Giocondo, is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel, and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1797. The poplar panel shows evidence of warping and was stabilized in 1951 with the addition of an oak frame and in 1970 with four vertical braces. Dovetails also were added, to prevent the widening of a small crack visible near the centre of the upper edge of the painting
The subject's expression, which is frequently described as enigmatic, 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.
As mentioned, the painted is also called La Gionconda, after the supposed sitter Lisa del Giocondo, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Little is known about the woman, expect that she was part of the prominent Gherardini family in Florence.
At least a dozen excellent replicas of the Mona Lisa exist, many of them by the master’s students. The proliferation of Mona Lisa’s reflects, at least in part, the subject’s almost immediate embodiment of the ideal woman—beautiful, enigmatic, receptive, and still just out of reach. Guinness World Records lists the Mona Lisa as having the highest insurance value for a painting in history. On permanent display at The Louvre museum in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on December 14, 1962. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$780 million in 2015.