Mona Lisa, also called Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, Italian La Gioconda, or French La Joconde, oil painting on a poplar wood panel by Leonardo da Vinci, probably the world’s most famous painting. It was painted sometime between 1503 and 1519, when Leonardo was living in Florence, and it now hangs in the Louvre Museum, Paris, where it remained an object of pilgrimage in the 21st century. The sitter’s mysterious smile and her unproven identity have made the painting a source of ongoing investigation and fascination.

The Mona Lisa or Gioconda is a half-light portrait by the Italian renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, that has been described as the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sang about, the most parodied art work in the world. 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. After his death, the painting entered François I’s collection. One of the most legendary reasons for the Mona Lisa’s fame is her mischievous smile. Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa in such a way that the eyes of the Mona Lisa fall into the centre of vision of the user, while the lips fall into the peripheral vision.