"Mona Lisa"

As you may know, the Mona Lisa is one of the most ( if not the most) recognised pieces of art in the world today. The half-length portrait was painted by the renowned Italian artist Leonardo Da Vinci. Leonardo started working on it in 1503 and it was in his studio when he died in 1519. So Leonardo most likely worked on it periodically and might have been left in an incomplete state. The French King Francis I acquired the painting after Leonardo's death and was secluded in French palaces until the French revolution and was claimed as the property of the people. The portrait hangs today in the Louvre museum in Paris.

So let's take a closer look...

The painting presents a woman in a half-body portrait sitting with hands perfectly folded on her lap using a backdrop. The woman is well but quite plainly dressed which suggests that she wasn't wealthy but wasn't poor either. To many people's surprise, the dimensions are only 77cm x 53cm, which makes it relatively small. The three-quarter profile quickly became conventional and is still the standard pose today for portraits. He uses a soft sculptural tone and colours that blend well with the background so that no one aspect of the painting stands out, which in my opinion makes it a little more realistic.

There have been many speculations about the sitter's identity, some say it was the artist himself disguised as a woman others say it was Lisa Gherardini wife of Francesco Gociondo, nevertheless it has been a source of great inspiration and ongoing fascination.

This masterpiece has no doubt also been subject to several artistic interpretations. It has been described as " the best known, the most written about, the most sung about and the most parodied art in the world."