Yes, most people might think she’s French. Hell no. The young womean, Lisa Gherardini was Italian, from Tuscany. She was married to Franceso del Giacondo who commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint his wife in 1517. It is beleived that da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa in the town of Greve, about 18 miles south of Florence, at what is now the Italian Wine estate of Vignamaggio in Greve, in the Chianti Classico region of Tuscany.
The Mona Lisa Italian: Gioconda is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world”. The painting’s novel qualities include the subject’s enigmatic expression, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.
The painting is probably of the Italian noblewoman Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. It is painted in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. Leonardo never gave the painting to the Giocondo family, and later it is believed he left it in his will to his favored apprentice Salaì. It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic. It has been on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris since 1797.
The Mona Lisa is one of the most valuable paintings in the world. It holds the Guinness World Record for the highest known painting insurance valuation in history at US$100 million in 1962 (equivalent to $870 million in 2021).
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