Mona Lisa
A half-length portrait of a woman — believed to be Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine merchant — posed against a dreamlike landscape of winding rivers and atmospheric mountains. Leonardo's sfumato technique — the application of translucent glazes to eliminate hard contours — gives the figure's skin and expression an uncanny sense of depth and life. Her famous smile shifts register depending on which part of the face the viewer focuses on, a perceptual trick that has fascinated scientists and art historians for centuries.
The Mona Lisa is the most recognized painting in human history and the defining masterpiece of the Renaissance, demonstrating in a single work the full range of Leonardo's innovations in portraiture, atmospheric perspective, and psychological observation. Its theft from the Louvre in 1911 and recovery two years later transformed it from an admired painting into a global cultural icon. It remains the most visited artwork in the world.
Commissioned in Florence around 1503-1506, the painting was created during the height of the Italian Renaissance's intellectual and artistic achievement, when Florence under Cosimo de' Medici had become the most sophisticated cultural center in Europe. Leonardo worked on it until his death in 1519 and is believed to have kept it with him throughout his later life.