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MONNA LISA
By LEONARDO DA VINCI

MONNA LISA
By LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519)

A melancholy interest attaches to this picture owing to the irreparable loss which the world has sustained by its theft from the Louvre not so very long ago. Vasari, a famous Italian critic who lived in Italy in Leonardo's day, says of it: " Let him who wants to know how far Art can imitate Nature realise it by examining this head ... it is a work that is divine rather than human."

The painter was one of the wonder-men of the world. Born at Vinci, between Pisa and Florence, he became a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, and achieved renown in all these capacities. At the age of twenty-eight he went to the East as engineer to the Sultan of "Babylon," or Cairo, and in later years he planned a system of hydraulic irrigation for the plains of Lombardy. In 1500 he entered the service of Caesar Borgia as architect and engineer, and four years later he finished this half-length portrait of "the woman with the inscrutable smile," which is accounted his most celebrated easel picture.

His famous " Last Supper" was painted on the walls of the refectory in the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. It has suffered from frequent restoration, necessitated by the dampness of the walls and the method of painting in oil upon plaster, but it still remains one of the world's masterpieces.

Leonardo was not content with an easy adherence to known rules, but achieved his style by a thorough and painstaking study of Nature. His known works are few in number, but English people are fortunate in being able to study and enjoy a representative picture in the National Gallery, while the finest series of his drawings are in the British Museum and at Windsor.

From the book "Famous Paintings" Volume 2 printed in 1913.

Large files of this public domain print are available at Stock Photos at Songs of Praise
(Firefox users must click again on the large photo to see the very large image.)

Online "Name the Painting"

The Day the Mona Lisa Was Stolen

"The Last Supper"
at Olga's Gallery

Restoration of "The Last Supper"

Leonardo Da Vinci
Online book by Maurice W. Brockwell

Mona Lisa
art project for children

Famous Paintings in this Series

James Archer My Great Grandmother	Bashkirtseff The Meeting	Bouguereau Charity	John Brett From the Dorsetshire Cliffs
Arnesby Brown The River Bank	Joseph Clark Mother's Darling	John Constable The Hay-Wain	Jean Baptiste Camille Corot The Fisherman's Hut
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot A Flood	Leonardo Da Vinci Monna Lisa	Edouard Detaille The Dream	Henri Fantin-Latour Flowers
Thomas Gainsborough Queen Charlotte	Thomas Gainsborough The Market Cart	Jean Baptiste Greuze The Head of a Girl	Jean Baptiste Greuze Fidelity
James Clark Hook Home With the Tide	Alfred William Hunt Windsor Castle	Josef Israels The Shipwrecked Mariner	B.W. Leader The Stream in Summer-time
Madame Vigee Le Brun Portrait of the Artist	Alphonse Legros A Canal With a Fisherman	Anton Mauve Watering Horses	J.L.E. Meissonier The Cavalier
Sir J.E. Millais Speak! Speak!	Sir J.E. Mallais My First Sermon	George Morland The Reckoning	George Morland The Inside of a Stable
Murillo The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin	Alfred Parsons When Nature Painted All Things Gay	Ralph Peacock The Sisters	Rembrandt Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Guild
Guido Reni "Ecce Homo"	Sir Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Mrs. Richard Hoare With Her Infant Son	Briton Riviere The Temptation in the Wilderness	Dante Gabriel Rossetti Day Dreams
John Singer Sargent Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth	Lady Stanley (Dorothy Tennant) His First Offence	Jan Steen Grace Before Meat	Marcus Stone On the Road from Waterloo to Paris
Constant Troyon Watering Cattle	H.S. Tuke "All Hands to the Pumps"	Velazquez King Philip IV. of Spain	S.E. Waller Sweethearts and Wives
Thomas Webster The Smile	Index Famous Paintings Volume 1 Art Gallery	Index Famous Paintings Volume 2 Art Gallery	Index Art Appreciation Lessons