by Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci began this small portrait of Lisa Gherardini around 1503, carried it into France, and continued revising it until his death in 1519. It is now in Room 711 of the Louvre.
Lisa Gherardini sits behind the low arm of a chair, her left hand resting across her right wrist. Her torso turns one way and her head turns back toward the viewer. Behind her, roads and waterways wind through a rocky landscape whose horizon is higher on the right than on the left.
The portrait is not on canvas. Leonardo da Vinci painted it in oil on a thin panel of poplar wood. The surface has changed over five centuries, but the basic structure remains clear: a seated figure shown from the waist up against a deeply receding landscape.
The painted panel is 79.4 centimetres high and 53.4 centimetres wide — about 31.3 by 21 inches. The Louvre also records the framed size as 101 by 77 centimetres. It is a modest portrait, not a monumental canvas.
That scale surprises people because reproductions have no fixed size. A textbook can shrink the portrait and a poster can enlarge it; online, it usually fills the screen. In the Salle des États, the small panel also faces Paolo Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana, a painting nearly ten metres wide. The contrast makes Leonardo's work look smaller still.
The Louvre identifies the sitter as Lisa Gherardini, born in Florence in 1479 and married in 1495 to the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. An October 1503 note by the Florentine official Agostino Vespucci records Leonardo working on the 'head of Lisa del Giocondo.' Giorgio Vasari's 1550 life of Leonardo also says Francesco commissioned a portrait of his wife.
Mona was not her first name. The Italian Monna is a contraction of madonna, a respectful form of address similar to 'my lady.' La Gioconda turns her husband's surname into a feminine form; the French La Joconde does the same. The early evidence supports Lisa Gherardini as the sitter, while the Louvre treats her husband's role as the probable commission rather than a completely settled fact.
Leonardo built the face from gradual transitions between light and shadow instead of drawing hard borders around the mouth, cheeks, and eyes. The technique is called sfumato, from the Italian word for smoke. It makes the edge of the smile difficult to pin to one exact line.
The rest of the pose also resists a fixed reading. Lisa looks outward, but her hands, torso, and head turn on slightly different axes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes this as a sense of arrested movement. The smile can therefore appear warmer or more reserved as the viewer's attention shifts. That visual effect is observable; claims about Lisa's private thoughts are interpretation.
Leonardo did not deliver the portrait to the Giocondo household. He retained it and continued working on it over many years. When he entered the service of François I and moved to France in 1516, the painting came with him. The Louvre says the king probably acquired it in 1518.
This is why the painting is in France: Leonardo brought it there and the French king acquired it from him. It was not seized during Napoleon Bonaparte's campaigns in Italy. The former royal collection became part of the national museum opened at the Louvre during the French Revolution.
On 21 August 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian glazier who had worked at the Louvre, removed the painting. The next day visitors found an empty space in the Salon Carré. The investigation reached the Paris avant-garde: the police arrested [Guillaume Apollinaire](person:guillaume-apollinaire) and questioned [Pablo Picasso](person:pablo-picasso) because of unrelated antiquities stolen earlier by Apollinaire's former secretary. Both men were cleared.
Peruggia kept the panel for more than two years. In 1913 he took it to Florence and tried to sell it to an art dealer, who alerted the authorities. The painting returned to France and went back on display at the Louvre. The theft did not create its reputation from nothing, but the repeated newspaper image of the missing portrait enlarged that reputation far beyond the museum-going public.
The painting was admired long before 1911. Its turning pose, direct gaze, continuous landscape, and sfumato offered a powerful model for sixteenth-century portraiture. It also belonged to the French royal collection and was displayed in a major public museum, giving generations of artists access to it.
Modern reproduction added another kind of fame. The theft circulated the face through newspapers; Marcel Duchamp's 1919 L.H.O.O.Q. could make its joke because a cheap postcard of the portrait was already recognizable; and the 1963 loan to Washington and New York drew enormous crowds. The painting is famous not for one secret but because artistic reputation, royal provenance, crime reporting, parody, tourism, and mass reproduction accumulated around the same image.
As verified on 13 August 2026, the Mona Lisa is in Room 711, the Salle des États, on Level 1 of the Denon wing. It has been displayed in a temperature- and humidity-controlled protective case since the room's 2005 renovation. The case protects both a globally famous target and a poplar panel that has warped and developed a crack.
There is no separate Mona Lisa ticket. A Louvre admission ticket covers the permanent collection. The museum says the room is normally open every day the Louvre is open, barring technical problems, but may limit viewing time when it is particularly busy. Room assignments and closures can change, so check the Louvre's current map on the day of a visit.
1503
An October note by Agostino Vespucci records Leonardo working on the head of Lisa del Giocondo in Florence.
1503–1519
Leonardo retains and repeatedly works on the poplar panel rather than delivering it to the family for whom it was probably begun.
1516
Leonardo enters the service of François I in France and brings the painting with him.
1518
François I probably acquires the portrait from Leonardo.
21 August 1911
Vincenzo Peruggia removes the painting from the Louvre; the vacant wall becomes an international news image.
December 1913
The painting is recovered in Florence after Peruggia tries to sell it, then returned to France.
1919
Marcel Duchamp adds a moustache, goatee, and the title L.H.O.O.Q. to a postcard reproduction, turning recognition of the portrait into the work's material.
1963
A rare United States loan draws large crowds at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
1966
The Louvre moves the painting into the Salle des États.
2005
The painting returns to the renovated Salle des États in a temperature- and humidity-controlled protective case.
The painted panel is 79.4 centimetres high and 53.4 centimetres wide, about 31.3 by 21 inches. The Louvre lists the framed dimensions separately as 101 by 77 centimetres.
No. Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa in oil on a panel of poplar wood. The wooden support has warped over time, one reason the Louvre keeps it in a climate-controlled case.
She is Lisa Gherardini, the Florentine wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. A note written in October 1503 names Leonardo's portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, supporting the identification recorded by Giorgio Vasari in 1550.
It means Lady Lisa, not a first name and surname. Monna is a contraction of the Italian madonna, a respectful form of address; La Gioconda and the French La Joconde derive from her husband's surname, Giocondo.
He began it by October 1503 and continued working on it until late in his life. The Louvre dates the object broadly to 1503–1519 rather than pretending it was completed in a single year.
Because Leonardo brought it to France when he entered the service of François I, and the king probably acquired it in 1518. It was not taken from Italy by Napoleon.
Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian glazier who had worked at the Louvre, stole it on 21 August 1911. He kept it for more than two years and was caught after trying to sell it to an art dealer in Florence in 1913.
Its fame accumulated over centuries: Leonardo's influential portrait technique, French royal ownership, public display at the Louvre, the worldwide coverage of the 1911 theft, modern parodies, rare international loans, and mass reproduction all reinforced one another. The theft amplified an existing reputation; it did not create the painting's importance by itself.
Leonardo softened the boundaries around the mouth, cheeks, and eyes with gradual layers of light and shadow, a technique called sfumato. Because there is no hard line fixing the expression, the half smile can seem to change as a viewer's focus moves.
Room 711, the Salle des États, on Level 1 of the Denon wing, as verified on 13 August 2026. Check the Louvre's live map before visiting because room access can change.
No. A standard Louvre admission ticket covers the museum's permanent collection, including the Mona Lisa when Room 711 is open. The museum may limit time in the room during very busy periods.
It has no meaningful market price because it belongs to the French national collection and is not for sale. Dollar estimates are hypothetical rather than appraisals based on a possible transaction.
Depicts · 1503
The Louvre identifies the sitter as Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Agostino Vespucci's October 1503 marginal note names Leonardo's 'head of Lisa del Giocondo,' supporting the early tradition recorded by Giorgio Vasari.
Displayed at
The live Louvre collection record places the painting in Room 711, the Salle des États, Denon wing, Level 1. It is kept in a temperature- and humidity-controlled protective case.