A Smile That's Puzzled Us for 500 Years: The Mona Lisa

The name "Mona Lisa" is instantly familiar, yet few people actually know what it means. Mona means "lady" or "madam," and Lisa was the woman's given name — so Mona Lisa simply means "Madam Lisa." The painting came about when Lisa's husband commissioned Leonardo to paint her portrait.

As the story goes, when Leonardo arrived to paint her, Lisa was dressed in mourning and visibly grieving — her daughter had recently died. Leonardo reportedly told her stories and had musicians play for her to coax out a smile, and the result is the portrait we see today. That's been the accepted account for five hundred years.

But the Mona Lisa has inspired countless other theories too. Because her features look somewhat masculine, some claim the bone structure lines up perfectly with a self-portrait by Leonardo, suggesting he may have painted himself. Others believe the model was Salai, Leonardo's longtime assistant. Still, the accepted story remains that the sitter was Lisa herself.

That famously enigmatic smile comes from sfumato — the same technique behind the Virgin of the Rocks — where Leonardo blurred the outlines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Another well-known detail is her missing eyebrows. In Florence, a high forehead was considered a mark of beauty, so one theory holds that Leonardo left out the eyebrows to make her forehead appear broader; another suggests he omitted them deliberately, since eyebrows tend to fix a facial expression too definitively, undercutting the sense of mystery he was after. Since Leonardo left no written account, no one can say for certain which is true.

The composition follows a triangular structure, set against a hazy, otherworldly landscape that seems to belong nowhere in particular. The exquisite rendering of her hands and the folds of her clothing reflects Leonardo's own study of anatomy — he actually performed dissections himself, giving his figures an anatomical precision few painters of his time could match.

So why does this Italian masterpiece live in France rather than Italy? Not because Napoleon stole it — this one was acquired entirely legitimately. King Francis I of France deeply admired Leonardo and invited him to France in his later years. When Leonardo made the move, he brought along Saint John the Baptist, the Virgin of the Rocks, and the Mona Lisa. After Leonardo's death, Francis I purchased these works properly from Leonardo's pupil. Leonardo spent a happy final chapter of his life in France and died there at 67. Contrary to popular belief, his tomb isn't in Italy — it's at the Château d'Amboise, about a three-hour drive from Paris.