What is the Mona Lisa's real name?

Answer 1

Based on the mid-sixteenth century biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Giorgio Vasari, many historians believe the painting is a portrait of Madam Lisa Giocondo, wife of a wealthy Florentine. It is from Vasari that the painting received the name Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda in Italian or La Joconde in French. But Vasari published his book thirty-one years after Leonardo's death, and he was known to fill in fact with fragments of fantasy.

Before Vasari, the painting had been referred to as "a certain Florentine lady" and later, in the collection at Fontainebleau, as "a courtesan in a gauze veil." There are many other theories about who the sitter might have been, based on bits of scattered evidence. But the panel is unsigned and undated, and although most portraits of the time included something to indicate the sitter's family name or social status, no such emblem can be found in the Mona Lisa. Nor is there any record of a commission for the portrait among Leonardo's papers.

No theory satisfactorily answers these questions. Some speculate that the Mona Lisa is not a portrait of one woman, but an artful composite of many, Leonardo's idealization of all womanhood. Others suggest it may have been one of Da Vinci's young male models in drag. Some even believe that the Mona Lisa is not a portrait at all, but instead what is known as a "finzione," an invention of Leonardo's extraordinary imagination.

Answer 2

The painting known as Mona Lisa has been one of the most celebrated, studied, disputed, cut up, damaged, copied, parodied and stolen paintings in history. Back in 1867, when it was less well known, the critic Walter Pater said it was "the mythic embodiment of the eternal feminine." In 2004, Dr. Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs announced that Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait. She supports this theory with the results of a digital comparison of Leonardo's known facial features. The gay Leonardo, she figures, needed to paint himself as a woman. Interestingly, a characteristic of portrait painting many have noticed is that long-worked facial features become transmogrified into those of the painter. Nevertheless, it seems most likely that it started out as the 20- to 24-year-old Lisa Gherardini. There are many opinions. Researcher Maike Vogt-Luerssen thinks Mona Lisa is Isabella of Aragon, the Duchess of Milan. In his backwards writing Leonardo refers to her as "a certain Florentine woman." We'll never know. Notwithstanding identification problems, Mona Lisa will forever have the sort of smile that is "enigmatic," "mysterious," and "come-hither."

Answer 3

The experts still aren't sure exactly who she is. Have a look at what the Louvre have to say about her.

This portrait was doubtless painted in Florence between 1503 and 1506. It is thought to be of Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine cloth merchant named Francesco del Giocondo - hence the alternative title, La Gioconda. However, Leonardo seems to have taken the completed portrait to France rather than giving it to the person who commissioned it. It was eventually returned to Italy by Leonardo's student and heir Salai. It is not known how the painting came to be in François I's collection.



Description


Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco Giocondo

The history of the Mona Lisa is shrouded in mystery. Among the aspects which remain unclear are the exact identity of the sitter, who commissioned the portrait, how long Leonardo worked on the painting, how long he kept it, and how it came to be in the French royal collection.
The portrait may have been painted to mark one of two events - either when Francesco del Giocondo and his wife bought their own house in 1503, or when their second son, Andrea, was born in December 1502 after the death of a daughter in 1499. The delicate dark veil that covers Mona Lisa's hair is sometimes considered a mourning veil. In fact, such veils were commonly worn as a mark of virtue. Her clothing is unremarkable. Neither the yellow sleeves of her gown, nor her pleated gown, nor the scarf delicately draped round her shoulders are signs of aristocratic status.


A new artistic formula


The Mona Lisa is the earliest Italian portrait to focus so closely on the sitter in a half-length portrait. The painting is generous enough in its dimensions to include the arms and hands without them touching the frame. The portrait is painted to a realistic scale in the highly structured space where it has the fullness of volume of a sculpture in the round. The figure is shown in half-length, from the head to the waist, sitting in a chair whose arm is resting on balusters. She is resting her left arm on the arm of the chair, which is placed in front of a loggia, suggested by the parapet behind her and the two fragmentary columns framing the figure and forming a "window" looking out over the landscape. The perfection of this new artistic formula explains its immediate influence on Florentine and Lombard art of the early 16th century. Such aspects of the work as the three-quarter view of a figure against a landscape, the architectural setting, and the hands joined in the foreground were already extant in Flemish portraiture of the second half of the 15th century, particularly in the works of Hans Memling. However, the spacial coherence, the atmospheric illusionism, the monumentality, and the sheer equilibrium of the work were all new. In fact, these aspects were also new to Leonardo's work, as none of his earlier portraits display such controlled majesty.


An emblematic smile

The Mona Lisa's famous smile represents the sitter in the same way that the juniper branches represent Ginevra Benci and the ermine represents Cecilia Gallerani in their portraits, in Washington and Krakow respectively. It is a visual representation of the idea of happiness suggested by the word "gioconda" in Italian. Leonardo made this notion of happiness the central motif of the portrait: it is this notion which makes the work such an ideal. The nature of the landscape also plays a role. The middle distance, on the same level as the sitter's chest, is in warm colors. Men live in this space: there is a winding road and a bridge. This space represents the transition between the space of the sitter and the far distance, where the landscape becomes a wild and uninhabited space of rocks and water which stretches to the horizon, which Leonardo has cleverly drawn at the level of the sitter's eyes.

Answer 4

Lisa Gherardini born 1479

Answer 5

no one knows actually. Some ppl think it was a DaVinci's boyfriend. Some think it was the painting of a richman's wife... And there are ppl who believe that DaVinci was trying to see himself as a woman...

Answer 6

La Jaconde, the French call it.

Answer 7

uhhh. mona lisa....

Answer 8

may be Vincenzo Perugia