about MONA LISA

                    

Mona Lisa is a 16th-century portrait painted in oil by Leonardo da Vinci during theRenaissance in Florence, Italy. Many people think Mona Lisa's smile is mysterious. It is so often studied, recognized, and copied that it is the most famous painting in the world. The Louvre says that about 80 percent of its visitors come to see the painting of Mona Lisa.

The painting is owned by the Government of France and is shown at the Musée du Louvre in Paris under the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

Vasari, who was Leonardo's first biographer (a person who writes about the life of another person), thought the painting was of a person named Lisa Gherardini. Speculation over the painting's model was solved in 2008 by Dr Armin Schlechter, a manuscript expert. Notes discovered in Heidelberg University Library which were written by Agostino Vespucci, a Florentine city official, reinforced Vasaril's earlier identification of the model. Lisa was the wife of Francesco del Giocondo a rich silk merchant, who lived inFlorence.

Although the sitter has traditionally been identified as Lisa del Giocondo, a lack of definitive evidence has long fueled alternative theories, including Leonardo's mother Caterina in a distant memory as the painting's subject. and the possibility that Leonardo used his own likeness.

Leonardo began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, Italy. According to Da Vinci's contemporary, Giorgio Vasari, "...after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished....". The painting was brought to France by Leonardo in 1516 and it was bought by Francis I of France.

The Mona Lisa used to hang in the Chateau Fontainebleau and was then moved to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, Napoleon I of France had it hanging in his bedroom in theTuileries Palace, but it was later moved to the Louvre where it is still hanging today.

 Perhaps Mona Lisa (1499-1500)