The Mona Lisa...who is the person in Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait?

Question

There has been much concern regarding the condition of the famous painting and what damage can occur to it as time passes.
However, it should not suffer too much damage if taken care of properly, experts who studied the painting closely said recently.

But, just who was this mysterious person with the "mystic" smile?
What was her name?
Where was she from?

Oops...sorry ashleyo
you're eliminated because of a misspell...
can you find it in your post?

While "thoroughness" of an answer will count...I'm looking for an "original" answer...afterall, we all know how to cut and paste.

Answer 1

Her name is in this article that was posted today on CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/09/26/mona.lisa.reut/index.html

If you don't want to read she was Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine merchant named Francesco de Giocondo.

Answer 2

Who Was She?
She is believed to be Lisa Gherardini, born Tuesday,
June 15th 1479. She married Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi
del Giocondo, a wealthy Florentine merchant, when she was 16. At the time
of the painting she was 24 and had 2 sons.

What other names does she go by?
Monna Lisa was her original title. Monna is a contraction for Madonna,
Mia Donna (Madam or My Lady). It became Mona Lisa, in English,
due to a spelling error. She is La Joconde in French, La Gioconda
in Italian, "the merry one," referring to the smile but also possibly a
play on her name, Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo.

Who painted her?
Leonardo da Vinci- (1452-1519) He was the illegitimate son of a notary
from the small Tuscan village of Vinci near Florence. Very handsome
with a wonderful physique, he even possessed an excellent singing voice.
Artist, scientist, philosopher, anatomist, astronomer, engineer, inventor
and courtier, a true Renaissance man.

How long did it take him to paint it?
It was believed to have been painted from 1503 to 1506, four years.

How old is the painting?
In 2003-2006, we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the painting.

Where is the signature?
The panel is unsigned and undated.

Where does it hang?
It took four years, almost the same length of time it took Leonardo to paint her,
but now Mona Lisa has a $7.5 million dollar room of her own at the Louvre in Paris,
France. It now hangs in the Salle de Etats. It gives the millions who come to see
the painting more room and a better view.

The inventory number for the painting is # 779.

Answer 3

Lisa Gherardini
Vasari identified the subject to be the wife of socially prominent Francesco del Giocondo, who was a wealthy silk merchant of Florence and a prominent government figure. Until recently, little was known about his wife, Lisa Gherardini, except that she was born in 1479, raised at her family's Villa Vignamaggio in Tuscany and that she married del Giocondo in 1495.

In 2004 the Italian scholar Giuseppe Pallanti published Monna Lisa, Mulier Ingenua (literally '"Mona Lisa: Real Woman", published in English under the title Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo's Model[4]). The book gathered archival evidence in support of the traditional identification of the model as Lisa Gherardini. According to Pallanti, the evidence suggests that Leonardo's father was a friend of del Giocondo. "The portrait of Mona Lisa, done when Lisa Gherardini was aged about 24, was probably commissioned by Leonardo's father himself for his friends as he is known to have done on at least one other occasion."[5] Pallanti discovered that Lisa and Francesco had five children and that she outlived her husband. She lived at least into her 60s, though no record of her death was located. Most scholars now agree that she is indeed the model.


Other suggestions

Some have seen a facial similarity between the Mona Lisa and other paintings, such as St. John the Baptist.Despite this evidence, various alternatives to the traditional sitter have been proposed. During the last years of his life, Leonardo spoke of a portrait "of a certain Florentine lady done from life at the request of the magnificent Giuliano de' Medici." No evidence has been found that indicates a link between Lisa Gherardini and Giuliano de' Medici, but then the comment could instead refer to one of the two other portraits of women executed by da Vinci. A later anonymous statement created confusion when it linked the Mona Lisa to a portrait of Francesco del Giocondo himself – perhaps the origin of the controversial idea that it is the portrait of a man.

Dr. Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs suggests that the Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait. She supports this theory with the results of a digital analysis of the facial features of Leonardo's face and that of the famous painting. When flipping a self-portrait drawing by Leonardo and then merging that with an image of the Mona Lisa using a computer, the features of the faces align perfectly. Critics of this theory suggest that the similarities are due to both portraits being painted by the same person using the same style. Additionally, the drawing on which she based the comparison may not be a self-portrait.


Isabella of Aragon, Raphael, Doria Pamphilj GalleryArt historians have also suggested the possibility that the Mona Lisa may only resemble Leonardo by accident: as an artist with a great interest in the human form, Leonardo would have spent a great deal of time studying and drawing the human face, and the face most often accessible to him was his own, making it likely that he would have the most experience with drawing his own features. The similarity in the features of the people depicted in paintings such as the Mona Lisa and St. John the Baptist may thus result from Leonardo's familiarity with his own facial features, causing him to draw other, less familiar faces in a similar light.

Maike Vogt-Lüerssen argues that the woman behind the famous smile is Isabella of Aragon, the Duchess of Milan. Leonardo was the court painter for the Duke Of Milan for 11 years. The pattern on Mona Lisa's dark green dress, Vogt-Lüerssen believes, indicates that she was a member of the house of Sforza. Her theory is that the Mona Lisa was the first official portrait of the new Duchess of Milan, which requires that it was painted in spring or summer 1489 (and not 1503). This theory is allegedly supported by another portrait of Isabella of Aragon, painted by Raphael, (Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome).

Answer 4

Here's some information on the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, Paris. Hve a look at what they 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

Answer 5

Mona Lisa (of the enigmatic smile ) was the Wife of a wealthy Florentine businessman named Francesco del Giocondo. Since she was Giocondo's wife, the painting is also known as ' La Gioconda ' .

Answer 6

Lisa Gherardini wife of Florentive Merchant Francesco de Giocondo. It's in the news right now. MSNBC.com Science and Tech section

Answer 7

It is said that the painting is of a woman named Lisa Gherardini, from Florence. She was married to an Italian merchant, Francesce de Giondo.

Answer 8

first you have to search for it:
in wikipedia:
the wife of wealthy Florentine businessman Francesco del Giocondo. "Mona" is a common Italian contraction of "madonna," meaning "my lady,"
i don't think it is fair to copy too much.
you can read about her in the links below.

Answer 9

Some say it is a self-portrait of Leonardi Da Vinci himself

Answer 10

I also believe the self potrait theory. He was quite vain and that's his little joke in the smile.