Why Is the Mona Lisa So Famous?

What is the Mona Lisa, and who does it show?

The Mona Lisa is a portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, kept at the Louvre museum in Paris.^[1][5] The Louvre identifies the sitter as Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, which is why the painting is called La Gioconda in Italian and La Joconde in French.^[1]

The identification long rested on Giorgio Vasari's account, first published in 1550, until a second piece of evidence was published in 2005: a margin note in a book at Heidelberg University Library, written in October 1503 by the Florentine official Agostino Vespucci, saying Leonardo was working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.^[3] The Louvre's catalogue notes that some historians and amateurs have proposed other identities, but it treats the tradition naming Lisa Gherardini as solid.^[2]

The dates are less exact: the Louvre says the picture was begun by around 1503 and that Leonardo kept working on it until the end of his life, and its catalogue dates the work 1503–1519.^[2] The older dating based on Vasari is 1503 to 1506, and Smithsonian Magazine gives "around 1507".^[3][4]

The portrait is painted in oil on a thin panel of poplar wood, not on canvas.^[1][2] The panel measures about 79 cm by 53 cm, a size the Louvre says Leonardo chose to show the sitter life-size.^[2]

What makes the painting technically special?

The Louvre singles out Leonardo's sfumato technique, in which glazes create a "smoky" effect with soft outlines and gentle contrasts.^[1] According to the museum's catalogue, the face is built from transitions between shadow and light that are too gradual to see, made with thin layers of oily glaze that carry very little pigment.^[2]

The pose draws on Flemish portraits, which showed sitters in three-quarter view instead of the traditional profile.^[2] In Leonardo's hands the pose is not stiff: it is the end of a turning movement of the body toward the viewer.^[2] The same soft blending, the catalogue says, gives the wide landscape of mountains and rivers behind her a striking effect of atmospheric perspective.^[2]

How did the Mona Lisa get to the Louvre?

The painting has been in France since Leonardo settled there in 1516.^[2] The Louvre's visitor page says King François I, who had invited him to France, bought it from him in 1518.^[1] The museum's catalogue is more cautious and says the king "very probably" acquired it that year.^[2] It cites a document found in 1999 by the historian Bertrand Jestaz, recording a large payment in 1518 from François I to Salaì, one of Leonardo's pupils, for some paintings.^[2]

That is how the portrait entered the French royal collections, which have been shown at the Louvre since the French Revolution.^[1]

How did the 1911 theft make the Mona Lisa famous?

According to Smithsonian Magazine, critics began calling the Mona Lisa one of the finest Renaissance paintings only in the 1860s, and at the time of the theft it was far from the most visited item in the Louvre.^[4]

On Monday, 21 August 1911, when the Louvre was closed to visitors, the portrait was taken from the Salon Carré gallery.^[4] The thief was Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian who had worked at the Louvre and had helped build the painting's protective frame.^[5] He hid overnight in a storeroom, took the picture off the wall in the morning and left with it under his clothes.^[4][5] History.com's account mentions only Peruggia, while Smithsonian, which spells the name Perugia, says two brothers named Lancelotti were with him.^[4][5]

The loss went unnoticed for more than a day.^[4][5] After the Louvre announced it, newspapers around the world ran banner headlines, and when the museum reopened a week later thousands of people came to stare at the empty wall.^[4][5] Smithsonian says popular culture seized on the theft and turned high art into mass art.^[4]

Peruggia hid the painting in the false bottom of a trunk for more than two years.^[4][5] In December 1913 he wrote to a Florentine art dealer, Alfredo Geri, who examined the picture with Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery, and reported him.^[5] Police arrested Peruggia on 11 December 1913.^[5]

After exhibitions in Florence, Milan and Rome, the painting returned to the Louvre in January 1914.^[4][5] In its first two days back it drew more than 100,000 people by Smithsonian's count and at least 120,000 by History.com's.^[4][5] The Louvre's own catalogue says the theft gave the portrait worldwide fame of a more popular kind.^[2]

How is the Mona Lisa displayed and protected today?

The portrait hangs in Room 711, the Salle des États, the largest room in the Louvre, which the museum chose for it in 1966.^[1] Since 2005 it has stood alone in the centre of the room inside a glass case with controlled temperature and humidity.^[1]

In 1956 a man threw a stone at the painting, slightly damaging the left elbow.^[2][6] The Louvre's catalogue says the stone broke the protective glass, while Smithsonian, citing Reuters, says the attack led the Louvre to put the painting behind safety glass.^[2][6] Smithsonian also reports an acid attack that year, a cup thrown in 2009, cake smeared on the glass in May 2022 and soup thrown in January 2024; the last two left the painting undamaged.^[6][8]

Will the Mona Lisa get a new room?

In January 2025 French President Emmanuel Macron presented a renovation plan for the overcrowded Louvre, expected to take nearly a decade; NPR reported that the Mona Lisa would move to its own space with separate access and a separate ticket.^[7] On 18 May 2026 France's culture minister, Catherine Pégard, announced the winning design, by STUDIOS Architecture Paris and Selldorf Architects, for new entrances on the museum's east side.^[9] The Louvre says the project includes a space designed specifically for the Mona Lisa and that the winning team will refine its proposal over the coming months.^[9]