Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci

Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci

A face without edges

The sitter is Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, which is why the Italians call the picture La Gioconda and the French La Joconde. She sits half-turned in a chair, her left arm on the armrest and her right hand laid over her left wrist. She wears a dark dress and a fine, transparent veil over her hair. Leonardo built her face out of glazes so thin and so gradually blended, the smoky manner called sfumato, that the corners of the mouth and eyes have no hard edges at all. That is why the smile seems to come and go.

The world behind her

Behind her the land is made of blue-grey mountains, winding paths, a river and, on the right, an arched bridge. The two halves do not line up: the horizon to the left of her head sits lower than the one on the right. Leonardo kept the panel with him for years, still working on it, and took it to France late in his life; it passed into the collection of the French kings. In 1911 it was stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian workman who had worked in the museum, and was recovered in Florence two years later.

Where it hangs

It hangs behind glass in the Salle des États of the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and measures 77 by 53 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 9,000-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 60 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Musée du Louvre, Paris · Wikidata Q12418 · Wikimedia Commons