Definition of Mona Lisa (Gioconda)

In the Louvre Museum in the city of Paris is one of the most recognized pictorial works, the Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda. Its creator was the famous Leonardo da Vinci, a Florentine polymath from the Renaissance.

Facts and curiosities of this world-renowned work

It is a portrait of a woman painted in oil and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. Refering to technique An employee, she is known as sfumato, which in Spanish could be translated as blurred. In principle, it is about the representation of Lisa Gherardini, Francisco de Giocondo's wife, but there is no absolute certainty about the true identity of the woman portrayed.

The most striking feature of the Mona Lisa is her strange smile, which can be interpreted as a gesture of joy or bitterness.

Various technical studies on this painting have revealed important curiosities:

1) the woman portrayed appears without eyelashes or eyebrows, but it has been discovered that in the original portrait she did include eyebrows and eyelashes,

2) after observation of the pupils with images high resolution initials and numbers have been found and are believed to be related to the authentic identity of the Mona Lisa (Leonardo was fond of esotericism and in his works he introduced symbolics to communicate messages),

3) at the bottom of the box appears the image of a bridge and in it there is a reference (numbers 7 and 2) that presumably allude to floods that took place on the Puente Vechio in the town of Bobbio north of Italy,

4) the hands of the woman portrayed highlight that she was surely pregnant and

5) in 1987 a self-portrait of Leonardo was superimposed with the Mona Lisa and it was found that there was a great similarity between the facial features of both and this likeness it has given rise to all kinds of speculation.

The famous theft of the Mona Lisa

In August 1911 the Mona Lisa inexplicably disappeared from the Louvre Museum. His theft became news with international projection. Two years later the painting because the thief (a former museum employee named Vincenzo Perugia) had tried to sell it to a gallery owner from art that he contacted the police to have the Mona Lisa recovered. Some years later it was discovered that the real mastermind of the robbery was the Argentine con man Eduardo Valfierno.

The fact that the Mona Lisa was stolen has raised all kinds of speculation and some scholars have even said that the portrait of the mysterious woman in the Louvre could be a copy.

Photos: Fotolia - freehandz / Claudio Divizia