7 Things You Didn’t Know About the Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa Mystery #1: Who Was Mona Lisa?

Over the past century, it has been proposed that Mona Lisa was a noblewoman – Isabella d’Este, marquise of Mantua, or Costanza d’Avalos, duchess of Francavilla. Others have stared at that unsettling visage and seen the face of a man – Leonardo da Vinci himself, or the man who was for 20 years his assistant (and perhaps his lover), Gian Giacomo Caprotti. There is even a theory that the picture may have started out as a portrait from life but, over the years that Leonardo worked on it, evolved into an abstract vision of the feminine ideal.

These days, most experts agree that the Mona Lisa is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, wife of a Florentine silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo (hence the name by which she is known in Italy and France, La Gioconda, or La Joconde). When she first sat for Leonardo da Vinci, in around 1503, she was about 24 years old. Her contrapposto pose – the body angled away from the viewer, head turned forward – was widely admired and copied by Leonardo’s contemporaries. And his sfumato technique, whereby sharp edges are blurred and shaded to create an uncannily lifelike effect, was seen as a brilliant technical innovation, very unlike the slightly frozen human figures of earlier, lesser painters.

Mona Lisa Mystery #2: The Hidden Initials

In 2010 Silvano Vinceti, president of Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, claimed to have discerned letters minutely painted on Mona Lisa’s eyes: L and V (Leonardo da Vinci’s initials), perhaps C, E or B. The Louvre responded that Vinceti’s letters were merely microscopic cracks in the paint.

Mona Lisa Mystery #3: The Broken Backdrop

The distant, dreamlike vista behind the Mona Lisa’s head seems to be higher on the right-hand side than on the left. It is hard to see how the landscape would join up. This is subliminally unsettling: Mona Lisa appears taller, more erect, when one’s gaze drifts to the left than when it is on the right.

Mona Lisa Mystery #4: The Bewitching Smile

In 2000, scientists at Harvard University put forward a neurological explanation for Mona Lisa’s elusive smile. When a viewer looks at her eyes, the mouth is in peripheral vision, which sees in black and white. This serves to accentuate the shadows at the corners of her mouth, making the smile seem broader. But the smile diminishes as soon as you look straight at it. It is the variability of her smile, the fact that it changes when you look away from it, that makes her seem so alive, and so mysterious.

Mona Lisa Mystery #5: The Unknown Bridge

The Mona Lisa’s background landscape seems unreal, but the bridge might be one that Leonardo knew. It is usually said to be Ponte Buriano in Tuscany, but in 2011 a researcher claimed that it depicts the Bobbio bridge over the Trebbia, which was washed away in a 1472 flood. Another study claimed that the number 72 could be seen in the brushstrokes on the bridge.

Mona Lisa Mystery #6: Da Vinci’s Obsession

Leonardo da Vinci worked on the painting for four years, and possibly at intervals after that. Strangely, he always took it with him when he travelled, and he never signed or dated it. The picture went with him when, towards the end of his life, he moved to France. It was sold to his last patron, King François I, and remained out of sight in the royal collection for almost 200 years. In 1799 Napoleon, then first consul of France, came across the painting and commandeered it for his bedroom. It was only in 1804 that the Mona Lisa went on public display – in the newly founded Louvre museum. At that time, and for decades afterwards, it was not seen as particularly interesting, but in the middle of the 19th century Leonardo’s stock as an artist slowly rose. He came to be seen as the equal of the two acknowledged Renaissance greats, Michelangelo and Raphael. This new-found interest in Leonardo as a painter drew attention to his few known works. The Mona Lisa, easily accessible in the Louvre, became an object of interest to critics and aesthetes at just the time that a new and deeply sensual attitude to art was emerging in France. 

Mona Lisa Mystery #7: Was Mona Lisa Unwell?

Mona Lisa has often been scrutinized by medical experts, and she turns out to be a fascinating patient. In 2010 an Italian doctor looked at the apparent swelling around her eyes and diagnosed excess cholesterol in her diet. Other conditions ascribed to her include facial paralysis, deafness, even syphilis. More happily, it has been suggested that the inscrutable look of contentment on her face, as well as the coy placement of her hands, indicate that she is pregnant. Dentists have also had their say. It has been posited that her expression suggests bruxism, compulsive grinding of the teeth; or that the line of her top lip suggests that her front teeth are missing – which, along with the faintest hint of a scar on her lip, raises the troubling possibility that she was a victim of domestic violence. Jungians, meanwhile, have seen her as an accomplished representation of the anima, the female archetype that resides in each one of us. It seems that almost any condition can be read into that puzzling face, and that some of the diagnoses, such as poor diet and dysfunctional marriage, are reflections of contemporary preoccupations.

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