Art › Paris › The Louvre
Mona Lisa
La Gioconda · La Joconde
Leonardo’s portrait of a Florentine silk merchant’s wife, the most visited painting in the world.
Leonardo began painting Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, in Florence around 1503. He never handed it over: he kept working on it for years and took it with him to France, where King Francis I acquired it. That is why it is in Paris, and why the Italians still call it La Gioconda.
It is only 77 by 53 cm. Leonardo blurred every outline into soft shadow (sfumato), so the corners of her mouth never quite settle into a smile, and the landscape behind her does not line up on either side.
On 21 August 1911 a handyman, Vincenzo Peruggia, walked out of the Louvre with it under his smock. It turned up in Florence two years later, and the theft made it the most famous painting in the world. Since 2005 it has hung alone behind bulletproof glass in the Salle des États, opposite the Wedding at Cana. Stand before it in 3D ›
