Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa is Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Leonardo began it in Florence around 1503 and kept it with him for the rest of his life, still adjusting it in France, where he died in 1519. Painted in oil on a poplar panel about 77 by 53 centimeters, it hangs in the Louvre in Paris. In Italian it is known as La Gioconda, in French La Joconde.

What you are looking at

A young woman sits half-length in a loggia, turned three-quarters toward us, her left arm resting on the arm of a chair and her right hand laid over her left wrist. She wears a dark, plain dress with a gathered neckline embroidered with a fine interlace pattern, and a nearly transparent veil over her hair, which falls in loose curls to her shoulders. She has no eyebrows or visible lashes, and no jewelry.

Her face turns to meet our eyes, and the corners of her mouth lift in the famous half-smile. Look closely and you will see that the smile is made almost entirely of shadow, in the corners of the mouth and the soft modeling of the cheeks, rather than of drawn lines.

Behind her stretches an imaginary landscape of winding roads, a bridge, lakes and jagged blue-green mountains fading into haze. The horizon on the left is noticeably lower than on the right, a mismatch that adds to the sense of movement around her. At the edges of the panel, the bases of two columns are just visible.

How it was made

Leonardo used sfumato, from the Italian for "smoke": dozens of extremely thin, translucent layers of glaze that blur outlines and let light and shadow merge without edges. Scientific study has shown how thin these layers are, some only a few micrometers. The technique explains why the expression seems to change as you look.

History and fame

A note written in 1503 by the Florentine official Agostino Vespucci records that Leonardo was painting a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, which confirms her identity. The painting was never delivered and passed after Leonardo's death into the French royal collection. Its worldwide fame grew dramatically after 1911, when it was stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian worker; it was recovered in Florence in 1913.

Where to see it

The Mona Lisa hangs behind protective glass in the Salle des États at the Louvre. See also Leonardo's Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk, Benois Madonna and The Last Supper, and our Renaissance and famous paintings collections.