The answer
Which Mona Lisa is this?
This is Leonardo’s own painting. [1] The Louvre records it as the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, painted in oil on a poplar panel between 1503 and 1519. [1]
It was already under way in October 1503. [1] That month the Florentine official Agostino Vespucci wrote a note in the margin of a book by Cicero, comparing Leonardo with the ancient painter Apelles and mentioning the head of Lisa del Giocondo. [1] [2] Armin Schlechter found the note while cataloguing an early printed book owned by Heidelberg University Library, and published his find in May 2005. [2]
Copies were made from the 16th century on, and the Louvre knows of more than a hundred. [1] One of them is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The Prado attributes it to Leonardo’s workshop and says it was painted by one of his pupils, between about 1507 and 1516. [3]
A third picture, the Isleworth Mona Lisa, belongs to a private group. [4] In 2012 The Art Newspaper reported that the foundation set up by its owners says Leonardo painted the face. [4] The paper added that the picture has generally not been accepted by Leonardo scholars, and that Martin Kemp of Oxford University called the research behind the claim “a mish-mash of suppositions”. [4]
Compare
Two panels, one workshop
The Prado copy repeats every change Leonardo made to his own picture: to the bust, to the outline of the veil and to the position of the fingers. [3] The Prado takes this to mean that the two were painted at the same time. [3]
The two figures are identical in size and shape, and were traced from the same cartoon. [3] A cartoon here means a full-size drawing used to transfer a design. The copy is painted on walnut, the original on poplar. [3] The Prado says plainly that its panel “is not comparable to the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in terms of quality and handling”. [3]
Look at the two side by side
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1. The face
Louvre 
Prado copy In the Louvre, the edges of the face melt into shadow. The copy’s face has firmer outlines and brighter skin. The Prado puts the difference in its own words: “the imprecision and delicacy of Leonardo’s painting is quite different to the precise technique of the artist who painted the Prado panel”. [3]
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2. The view on the left
Louvre 
Prado copy The copy shows rocks, water and a winding road clearly under a blue sky. The Prado says the background of its copy is unfinished. [3] At the left edge of the copy stands the base of a column. The Louvre describes two small columns at the ends of the balustrade behind her, framing the view. [1]
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3. The bridge on the right
Louvre 
Prado copy Both panels have a small bridge of several arches over the water, low on the right.
The photograph of the Prado copy is 2,224 pixels wide, against 7,854 for the Louvre painting, so its details look softer when enlarged.
Its history
From Florence to Paris
Giorgio Vasari’s life of Leonardo, first published in 1550, says that Francesco del Giocondo asked Leonardo to paint his wife. [1] In its later edition Vasari wrote that Leonardo “undertook to execute, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Monna Lisa, his wife; and after toiling over it for four years, he left it unfinished”. [5]
Vasari never saw the painting, the Louvre notes: it had been in France since Leonardo settled there in 1516. [1] Leonardo went on working on it for the rest of his life, and it was still unfinished when he died. [1]
In 1518 King François I paid 2,604 livres to Salaì, one of Leonardo’s pupils, for some paintings he had handed over to the king. [1] The historian Bertrand Jestaz found the payment in the French national archives, and the Louvre reads it as the king’s purchase of Leonardo’s originals. [1] By Vasari’s account, the painting was with the King of France at Fontainebleau. [5]
It passed with the royal collection to the Louvre, which records its acquisition in 1793. It belongs to the French state. [1]
In 1911 Vincenzo Peruggia, a glazier who worked at the Louvre, stole the painting, and it was found again in 1913. [1] The Louvre says the theft gave the painting worldwide fame, and above all a more popular fame. [1]
In 1956 a man threw a stone at it, breaking the protective glass and slightly damaging the left elbow. [1] It left France in 1963, for the United States, and in 1974, for Japan and the Soviet Union. [1] Since then it has stayed in the Louvre because it is so fragile. [1]
Look closely
Four details
Four details, cut from a large photograph of the painting published by the research and restoration centre of the French museums (C2RMF). The notes say what you can see. The colours are dark and yellowish because thick layers of varnish, added after Leonardo’s death, have aged into a yellow filter that turns the blue of the sky green, the Louvre explains. [1]
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Detail 1 of 4
The face
Leonardo built the face from almost invisible changes between shadow and light, laid on in thin glazes that soften every outline: the effect called sfumato. [1] “Giocondo” means happy in Italian, and the Louvre suggests the smile may also be a play on her married name. [1] Close up, a fine net of cracks covers the skin.
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Detail 2 of 4
The hands
Her right hand rests on her left, on the arm of her chair. Flemish portraits of the time often set the hands at the front of the picture, on a kind of ledge. [1] Here, the Louvre points out, they rest naturally on the arm of the chair. [1]
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Detail 3 of 4
The road
On the left, a winding road crosses the mountains. [1] It loops back and forth in pale strokes across the brown ground.
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Detail 4 of 4
The bridge
On the right, a bridge crosses the river. [1] Its arches are small, pale marks on the dark water.
Common questions
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Who is the woman in the Mona Lisa?
Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, the Louvre says. It calls this identification a solid tradition going back to the 16th century. [1]
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How did the Mona Lisa end up in France?
Leonardo took it with him when he settled in France in 1516, and King François I very probably acquired it in 1518, according to the Louvre. [1]
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Where can I see it?
In the Louvre in Paris. [1] Rooms can change, so check the Louvre’s own page before you visit.
This painting is available as a print. View the print →
