Who painted the Mona Lisa?
Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. He began it around 1503 in Florence and kept working on it for years. It now hangs in the Louvre in Paris.
The painting is believed to show Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo. That is why it is also called La Gioconda in Italian and La Joconde in French. Leonardo never delivered it to the family and carried it with him when he moved to France.
Leonardo used a technique called sfumato, blending colors and edges so softly that there are no hard lines. This creates the famous shifting smile and the hazy landscape behind the sitter. The painting is on a poplar wood panel and is surprisingly small, about 77 by 53 centimeters.
How it became so famous
The Mona Lisa was admired for centuries, but it became a global celebrity after it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman. It was missing for more than two years before it was recovered in Florence in 1913. Today millions of people visit it every year behind protective glass.
Did You Know?
The Mona Lisa has no visible eyebrows or eyelashes. High-resolution scans suggest Leonardo may have painted them and they faded or were removed during cleaning over the centuries.