The Mona Lisa

We explain what it is The Mona Lisaalso called Mona Lisawho was its author and what are the characteristics of this painting. Also, its history, its enigmas and curiosities.

What is The Mona Lisa wave Mona Lisa?

It is popularly known as The Mona Lisathe Monna Lisa either Mona Lisa to a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci. The original title of the work is Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and it was painted between 1503 and 1519.

The painting is a half-length portrait painted in oil on a poplar wood panel. There you can see in the foreground a Renaissance woman, who dresses in dark clothes and has a veil over her head, and who is sitting in an armchair, with her arms resting on the seat. In the background you can see trees, mountains and a lake.

The portrait is exhibited in one of the most important rooms of the Louvre Museum in Paris, and It is one of the most famous paintings in the world Its story, of which many different versions are told, is surrounded by mysteries.

It is believed that the name The Mona Lisa It is because the model was the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, whose name was Lisa Gherardini. Hence the other popular title of the painting is Monna Lisaa diminutive of Madonna Lisa (madonna derives from mea dominates, in Latin, which translates as “my lady”). This version is widely accepted, although the identity of the model remains a matter of debate.

See also: Renaissance

Author of The Mona Lisa

The author of The Mona Lisa is the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) a polymath (that is, an expert in several disciplines) who cultivated with excellence not only painting and drawing, but also architecture, paleontology, botany, sculpture, philosophy, poetry, engineering, music and urban planning.

Leonardo da Vinci He is considered the greatest representative of the Renaissance world and a genius ahead of his time. Leonardo's inventiveness was such that he was able to conceive prototypes of automobiles, submarines, flying vehicles and other artifacts and tools several centuries before the first formal attempts to materialize them.

Despite having been a great creator, only about twenty of his works are preserved, along with his sketchbooks and diagrams. In addition, it is estimated that Da Vinci produced several thousand manuscripts, notes and sketches, of which around 13,500 remain. Many of his paintings are fundamental references of Western culture. and have been covered, referred to and cited thousands of times.

Leonardo's remains rest in the Saint-Hubert chapel, in Amboise, France.

Features of The Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa has the following characteristics:

• His technique was an innovation of Da Vinci. The technique that allowed the level of realism and three-dimensionality that characterizes the work to be achieved was invented by Da Vinci himself and is called sfumate (blurred). It consists of applying different layers of pigment on the canvas, very diluted, in order to obtain a translucent effect that delicately overlaps the tones. It became very common in Renaissance works.
• Its dimensions are realistic. The Mona Lisa It is 79.4 centimeters high and 53.4 centimeters wide. The dimensions of the support allowed Leonardo to bring the portrait closer to the real proportions of his model.
• The colors are not the originals. The painting was retouched numerous times by Da Vinci himself and, after his death, by other painters. The multiple interventions and varnishings generated over time a yellowish veil that altered the original palette of the work and distorted, for example, the blue of the sky, which currently has a greenish tone.
• There are multiple replicas. There are numerous replicas of the painting, such as The Mona Lisa from Leonardo's workshop (also called The Mona Lisa of the Prado), which is located in the Prado Museum, in Madrid, and the Mona Lisa from the Hermitagefrom the 17th century and by an unknown author, which belongs to the collection of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

History of The Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa It was one of Da Vinci's last works. Leonardo began painting it in 1503 and he did not stop retouching it until the end of his days in 1519 so it is believed that he never considered it completely finished. It was later purchased by King Francis I of France (1494-1547), a monarch who was important to the cultural explosion of the Renaissance. Since then, the painting has belonged to the French State.

Initially, it was exhibited in the Palace of Fontainebleau, later in the Palace of Versailles and finally in the Louvre Museum. Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have ordered it removed from the museum to hang in his bedroom at the Tuileries Palace in central Paris, until it was returned to the museum in 1804.

In 1911, The Mona Lisa It was stolen by the Italian Vincenzo Peruggia an artist and former museum employee, who entered the Louvre one morning dressed in a maintenance uniform, separated the painting from its frame, and left the museum with the work hidden under his clothing. The investigation into the case kept the museum closed for a week, with no results. Over the following years, the Louvre welcomed thousands of visitors who came to see the empty frame of the Mona Lisa, and the painting acquired extraordinary fame among the general public.

Almost two and a half years later, Peruggia was arrested when he tried to sell the painting to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Although he claimed his intention to return him to his legitimate homeland, Italy, he was sentenced to one year and fifteen days in prison.

After being exhibited in Florence, Rome and Milan, The work returned to the Louvre Museum and it was located in the central space of the largest room in the complex: the Hall of States, where it is accompanied by other great pieces by Venetian masters.

During World War II, The Mona Lisa She was housed in the castle of Amboise and in the abbey of Loc-Dieu, until her return to the Louvre, where she is currently visited by millions of people a year.

In recent years, the work was attacked twice by environmental activists. In 2022, a man dressed as an old woman threw a cream pie at him, and in 2024, two young men threw tomato soup at him demanding action against climate change. None of these attacks caused damage to the paint, since it is protected by high-strength armored glass.

enigmas of The Mona Lisa

There are multiple theories and mysteries around The Mona Lisamany of them the result of fantasy and others the product of specialist analysis. These enigmas are related to different aspects of the work.

• The identity of the model

Although many specialists accept the version that it is Lisa Gherardini as true, the identity of the model continues to be debated. Some claim that she was a neighbor of the artist, while others claim that she is Queen Isabella of Aragon, the Duchess Costanza d'Avalos or a Neapolitan lady named Isabella Gualanda. It has even been said that it was Leonardo's own mother, painted from memory.

Another hypothesis suggests that the work was commissioned by Lisa Gherardini and her husband Francesco del Giocondo to celebrate the birth of their second child, which could explain the garnello (a veil that pregnant women wore at the time) and the slight and serene smile with which the model observes the painter. In 2022, new research based on the landscape depicted in the painting suggested that it could be the Italian noblewoman Bianca Giovanna Sforza.

• The meaning of smile

The Mona Lisa It produces the effect of a hidden, faint smile, which disappears when we focus on it and appears again when we look out of the corner of our eye. This smile is so enigmatic that when observed in detail it can even become a gesture of bitterness, which is why it has generated speculation for centuries. Recently, visual recognition software for human emotions was used to identify, through an algorithm, the expressions contained in this gesture. The program concluded that the model is 84% ​​happy, 9% uncomfortable, 6% scared and 2% upset.

• The location of the landscape represented

There are many theories regarding the landscape that appears in the background of the painting. Some identify it with the Alps in the region near Milan, others with the city of Bobbio, in the Emilia-Romagna region, and others with the Arno River Valley. The difference between the right section and the left section of the painting, due to the interruption generated by the silhouette of the woman represented in the foreground, has made it difficult to identify the exact location of the landscape.

• The alleged presence of secret messages

Dan Brown's mystery novel The Da Vinci Code and its aftermath has been taken by some people as true stories. This has fueled the theory that the technique of sfumate It supposedly would have allowed Leonardo to insert, between the layers of paint, hidden messages and secrets related to the Catholic Church.

References

• Boyano, J. T. (2021). Why does “La Mona Lisa” at the Louvre smile and the one at the Prado not?. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/
• Da Vinci, L. (2006). Painting treatise. Andromeda.
• Delieuvin, V. (2021). Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, dit La Joconde ou Monna Lisa. Musee du Louvre. https://collections.louvre.fr/
• González Mozo, A. (2021). Mona Lisa. National Prado Museum. https://www.museodelprado.es/