Mona Lisa

The woman has a name

Lisa Gherardini married the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo in 1495.^[1]

Lisa Gherardini’s identity has documentary support beyond the later fame of the picture. While cataloguing an early printed book at Heidelberg University Library, Armin Schlechter found a handwritten note by the Florentine official Agostino Vespucci. In the margin of a 1477 edition of Cicero, Vespucci referred in October 1503 to Leonardo painting Lisa del Giocondo. Published in 2005, the discovery supplied near-contemporary support for the identification later given by Giorgio Vasari.^[3]

The note establishes that Lisa’s portrait was under way in 1503, rather than a completion date. Leonardo retained it and continued working. The Louvre treats her husband’s commission as probable and acquisition by François I in 1518 as very likely.^[1]

Looking beyond the smile

Look at the hands before the mouth. Their overlap makes a calm foundation for the turning body and head. The dark clothing sets off the face, while roads, water and distant mountains carry attention away into space. In this reading, the portrait’s intimacy depends on the contrast between a person close enough to address us and a landscape whose distances are difficult to measure. This is visual interpretation, not an identification of a secret place.^[2]

How Leonardo softened the edges

Sfumato describes the gradual merging of shadow and light that avoids a hard outline. In 2010, a team working with the Louvre, the French museum research laboratory and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility used X-ray fluorescence to study faces in seven Leonardo paintings, including this one, without taking samples. Their analysis found that some glazes were built in layers only one or two micrometres thick, accumulating to roughly thirty or forty micrometres. These are results about studied paint passages, not a claim that every part of every Leonardo has an identical recipe.^[4]

A different investigation, published in 2023, examined an exceptional microsample from the Mona Lisa’s ground layer—the preparation beneath the image. Researchers detected the rare lead compound plumbonacrite and interpreted the chemistry as evidence that Leonardo probably treated oil with a substantial amount of lead oxide to prepare a thicker material. The paper explicitly describes ambiguous evidence in his manuscripts. The finding strengthens a hypothesis about a working recipe; it does not reveal a concealed message or fully reconstruct every stage of painting.^[5]

A workshop copy preserves the decisions

The Prado’s version is valuable because it records more than the finished image’s outward appearance. Infrared comparison found that hidden corrections to the waist, fingers, veil and head in the Louvre painting recur in the Madrid panel. A later copyist looking only at the visible surface would not normally reproduce changes already concealed by paint. The Prado concludes that the two painters worked in parallel and that the pupil followed the developing composition.^[6]

This evidence changes how the original can be studied. The copy is a witness to a process, rather than simply a substitute souvenir. It also preserves the copyist’s own decisions, so it should not be used as an exact colour key for every part of Leonardo’s picture. The Prado’s later exhibition placed such workshop paintings within a practice that allowed pupils to retain distinct styles under Leonardo’s supervision.^[7]

A fragile panel with a long material history

The protective display also responds to the support’s vulnerability. The Louvre explains that the poplar panel has warped and developed a crack; its case controls temperature and humidity. The conservation problem is therefore partly one of managing wood’s response to its environment, as well as protecting a famous painted surface.^[2]

The Louvre records aged varnishes that yellow and darken the colours. It rejects claims of a cut-down panel, citing unpainted edges and a paint ridge from the working frame. Darkness does not itself establish mourning clothes.^[1]

The theft widened an existing reputation

Vincenzo Peruggia, a glazier who had worked at the Louvre, stole the painting in August 1911. It was recovered after he tried to sell it to an Italian dealer more than two years later. The episode enlarged its public fame; that effect should not be mistaken for the invention of its artistic importance.^[2]

The Louvre’s educational account records its return to display on 4 January 1914. The long absence, investigation and return became another story viewers encountered before they encountered the paint. For a modern audience, that history helps explain why recognition can arrive first and sustained looking only afterward. The theft belongs to the painting’s reception, not to Leonardo’s original intention.^[8]

Stories and their evidence

Lore, disputed interpretations and stronger evidence

Contradicted story: Peruggia claimed that Napoleon had taken the portrait from Italy and that he was returning it. The Library of Congress discusses this mistaken claim and points to the much earlier royal acquisition. It matters because a story about national belonging helped justify the theft. It should be reported as the thief’s assertion, rather than repeated as the painting’s provenance.^[9]

Published speculation: a 1992 dental article proposed that the expression reflected missing front teeth. This is an interpretation of a painted face, without an examination of the sitter. Its publication establishes that the proposal was made; it does not establish Lisa’s dental condition. Claims of this kind should retain the author, date and speculative status, rather than become a diagnosis in the article.^[10]

A 2004 perception experiment asked observers to judge versions of the face overlaid with visual noise and found that changes around the mouth affected the perceived expression, including the impression of smiling eyes. That research concerns how people read an image. It does not identify Lisa’s private thoughts. The distinction leaves room for an engaging experience of the smile while keeping a laboratory result separate from a historical conclusion.^[11]