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The Mona Lisa. is probably the world's most famous painting. Itartwork was painted by an artist, Leonardo Da Vinci. The Mona Lisa also continues to amaze everyone who sees her for the first time in the Louvre in Paris: at 77 cm × 53 cm, she is simply not big enough for people.
Who painted the Mona Lisa?
Leonardo Da Vinci began work on the artwork in 1503 in Florence, Italy, and worked on the artwork for a total of three years. The famous painting was commissioned by the Italian businessman Francesco Del Giocondo and is said to be a portrait of his wife Lisa Gherardini. Today, the painting is known as “Mona Lisa,” because Mona was ais a portmanteau of Madonna, which means "my lady".
The Mona Lisa was painted during the Renaissance. The world has fallen for her, especially because of her smile. Some say she would smile, others are sure she would look serious.
Although “Mona Lisa” was a commissioned painting, Del Giocondo was never handed it over. Partly because Leonardo, despite working on it on and off for at least three years, never felt it was finished.
Leonardo da Vinci and Clos Lucé
In 1516, Leonardo was invited by King Francis to work at the king's castle, Clos Lucé. Leonardo brought his Mona Lisa with him and probably continued working on the painting here. Leonardo worked here until his death in 1519. The Mona Lisa was still in his possession at the time. After his death, Leonardo's assistant, Salai, inherited the Mona Lisa, along with Leonardo's other works of art.
King Francis bought the painting for a modest sum and kept it in his castle at Fontainebleau until Louis the XIV moved it to the Palace of Versailles. Here it remained until the French Revolution at the end of the 18 e century. It was then moved to the world-famous Louvre museum, where it still hangs today. However, the painting has made a few excursions in between.
Mona Lisa damaged by vandalism
In addition to theft, the painting has also been the target of vandalism several times. In 1556, part of the work was damaged when someone threw acid on it. That same year, someone else threw a stone at the artwork. As a result, the Mona Lisa was placed behind glass. This prevented damage when a woman sprayed red paint on the painting in 1974, and also in 2009,when a Russian woman threw a cup of tea on it. The damage from the first two damage was repaired with good results.
Mona Lisa value 2025
In 1962-1963, the Mona Lisa went on a world tour and was exhibited in many different museums. Prior to the tour, the painting was estimated to be worth approximately $100 million. The tour was a great success and millions of people visited the museums to admire the Mona Lisa. Today the painting is estimated to be worth 0.7 billion euros. That makes the Mona Lisa the most precious painting in the world.
For example, the 1999 Guinness Book of Records lists the Mona Lisa exhibited in the Louvre in Paris as the painting with the highest insured value: it was valued at US$100 million on December 14, 1962, which would equate to approximately US$843 million in 2025, taking inflation into account.
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The Mona Lisa's eyebrows cause confusion
But the new findings that have come to light about the Mona Lisa are not about her size (or compactness), nor her smile. It's about something completely different: her eyebrows.
The Mona Lisa's eyebrows have been the subject of discussion around the world for centuries. Or rather, let's talk about her non-existent eyebrows.
At that time it was a beauty ideal for women to have no eyebrows and they shaved them off. The theory goes that the Mona Lisa herself removed her eyebrows and da Vinci simply painted her as she was.
Copy Mona Lisa
The great controversy: Did Da Vinci not look carefully? It would be true that da Vinci did not give the Mona Lisa eyebrows in the portrait, if she had actually shaved them off. However, in 2012, another portrait of the Mona Lisa was found. It resembles the original Mona Lisa almost down to the last hair. Only one thing is different: the copy has eyebrows!
Thecopy of the Mona Lisa is said to have been made by a student of da Vinci. It had been left behind by an overpaint for hundreds of years; restorers only uncovered the portrait in 2012. The apprentice must have painted the young lady at about the same time as the great master, but his work shows more detail. Eyebrows, eyelashes, lace trim and all that. This debunks the theory that the Mona Lisa had no eyebrows.
Did Leonardo Da Vinci just not look right? Did he work cursorily and not see all those details? No, not at all.
Da Vinci, what is it with eyebrows?
Researcher Pascal Cotte discovered on high-resolution scans that da Vinci probably painted eyebrows on his beloved Mona Lisa. According to the current research, there were also eyelashes and the like. But these details have probably just faded over time.
The story of the beautiful Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci spent three years painting the Mona Lisa. To this day, the painting remains one of the most enigmatic paintings in the world.
Paralyzing horror spread beneath itstaff of the Louvre in Paris. In the Salon Carré of the renowned art museum, there was only an empty rectangle on August 22, 1911 - just before Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa had hung there.
Although a detective was appointed as the new director of the Louvre, it initially remained a mystery how the 77 x 53 cm portrait could simply disappear. The previous day, a Monday, the building was closed to the public for cleaning and maintenance.
Numerous photos were moved during this time. When the 35 kg wooden frame was discovered in a corner of the Louvre, it became clear that the thief had taken ithad loosened the painting panel and somehow smuggled it out of the building. There was no trace of the perpetrator and it remained that way for the next two years.
This spectacular theft sparked renewed interest in one of the most enigmatic portraits in art history. Yet the oldest and most reliable tradition is very convincing. The painting depicts Lisa di Noldo Gherardini, born in 1479, the daughter of a Florentine draper.
She was betrothed at a young age to Giuliano de Medici, the youngest son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. At that time, the Medici family ruled the entire territory around Florence. But in 1494 a religious revolt broke out here and the Medici were expelled from the city.
Giuliano also fled to King Charles VIII of France, who occupied northern Italy with an invading army. While Giuliano acquired the rank of duke in French service, poor Lisa was left alone and became pregnant in Florence. Finally, in 1495, the much older but very wealthy merchant Francesco del Giocondo took her in and married her.
In 1503 he ordered a portrait of his wife from the famous universal genius Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo, not a fast worker anyway, struggled with the painting for three years, eventually keeping it and taking it with him to his French exile in 1517.
When a real cult broke out around the painting in the 19th century (the Italians baptized it Monna Lisa - Madame Lisa - or La Gioconda), people did not want to believe that the lady with the strangely veiled look was just a boring merchant's wife.
People began to psychologically analyze her inscrutable smile and the sublime magic of her appearance. Thus the interpretation fluctuatedof the Mona Lisa between saint and whore. Even the sparsely depicted landscape in the background struck a German art historian in 1909 as "dreamy, as if vibrating in thunderous sensuality."
The most discussed thesis to date is that the painting is a disguised self-portrait of Leonardo, who wanted to present a riddle to his posterity. A computer analysis between da Vinci's only authentic self-portrait, a drawing, and the Mona Lisa served as evidence.
The first of course has the crucial flaw that it shows the artist as a wrinkled old man over 60, while the Gioconda is at most 25 to 30 years old. This makes any comparison with the face highly speculative.
Another (correct) argument is that there were no preliminary sketches or sketches for this painting, although Leonardo usually made several pen drawings of his models. Of course not, because he only had to look in the mirror to continue working on the painting.
Here too, things could have turned out very differently. It's possible that the preliminary studies were simply lost during oneof Leonardo's numerous moves.
A new theory from the self-portrait faction: the Mona Lisa wears a braided insert at the décolleté, which is called vinco in Italian - the parallels with da Vinci are obvious. But unfortunately this vinco is worn by several ladies portrayed by Leonardo, such as Ginevra de Benci (around 1478) or Cecilia Gallerani (around 1485).
The most bizarre contribution to the Mona Lisa discussion was recently made by archaeologists from the British University of Bradford. According to their analysis, the Gioconda's enigmatic mouth area can be traced to a dental problem.
Leonardo merely wanted to hide his model's defective teeth behind a slightly narrowed smile. The real secret probably lies in a completely new painting technique. Leonardo invented the sfumato (Italian = hazy, misty).
This refers to a smooth, barely noticeable transition between areas of different colours. As a result, the shadows flow into each other, causing the contours to become partially blurred, as well as the facial expression. A light veil of mist also hangs over the barely suggested smile and the shadows at the corners of the mouth of the genteel merchant's wife Lisa del Giocondo.
In December 1913, a gallery owner from Florence reported that a stranger had offered him the Mona Lisa for sale.
Vincenzo Perugia arrested
32-year-old decorative painter Vincenzo Perugia was eventually arrested. He confessed to the theft, but disguised it with the patriotic impulse of wanting to give Italy back one of its greatest works of art. The court did not believe Perugia's noble motives and sentenced him to seven months in prison.
He had stored the painting, which was painted on thin poplar wood, so carefully that it suffered hardly any damage untilsurprise of experts. Since 2001, the Mona Lisa has been smiling in a separate room of the Louvre behind triple bulletproof glass, protected by alarm systems.
The Louvre currently has no plans to Paint by Numbers to sell.
