Da Vinci Paints "Mona Lisa"

Leonardo da Vinci, the Florentine artist and polymath of the High Renaissance, began work on the Mona Lisa around 1503. He is thought to have continued refining the portrait over many years, and it remained in his possession until his death in France in 1519.

The painting, an oil portrait on a poplar panel, is generally believed to depict Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, which is why the work is also known in Italian as La Gioconda. It is admired for its subtle modeling, atmospheric background, and the sitter's famously enigmatic expression.

Leonardo's use of sfumato, a technique of soft, smoky transitions between tones, gives the face a lifelike subtlety that influenced generations of painters. Now housed in the Louvre in Paris, the Mona Lisa became perhaps the most famous painting in the world and an enduring emblem of Renaissance art.