On August 21, 1911, the painter-decorator Vincenzo Perugia took Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa from the Louver. This theft made the work a legend. Even before that, though, the painting had captured the minds of scholars and artists worldwide the same way a TonyBet login website captured international gamblers. One of them was even said to have been driven insane by it.
Only in 2005 did art historians agree that the heroine of the painting was Lisa del Giocondo. We tell you who she was and why her portrait became an iconic work of art.
The Mona Lisa or the Gioconda?
In fact, both names are correct. However, as it happens, different countries have established other names for the painting. For example, in Britain, it’s usually called “Mona Lisa,” but in France and Italy – “Gioconda” (La Joconde and Gioconda, respectively).
The Wife of a Silk Merchant or People
Little is known about Mona Lisa’s life, and even those few facts sometimes vary. Nevertheless, the historian Giuseppe Pallanti managed to get most of the facts about her.
Lisa was born into the ancient aristocratic family of the Gerardini in Florence. The family’s income came from farmland in Chianti. Lisa’s mother was Lucrezia del Caccia, the third wife of Anton-Maria di Noldo Gherardini. The two previous wives died in childbirth. Lisa had three sisters and three brothers.
The Gerardini family rented houses as it was cheaper than repairing their own. Once, they settled next to Piero da Vinci – Leonardo’s father. So Lisa and the great artist may have known each other by then. Gerardini had a small country house where the family spent the summer while the family’s father watched the farm work.
At the age of 15, Lisa Gherardini married Francesco Gioconda, a humble cloth and silk merchant. He was 14 years her senior. Lisa became his second wife after the death of the first, Camilla Rucellai. She was, incidentally, the sister of Lisa’s father’s second wife. The dowry for the girl was given modestly by those standards: 170 florins and the farm of San Silvestro not far from the country house of the Gerardini. This suggests that Francesco and Lisa married for love, since neither of them could boast of a fortune. However, Francesco won more, as he married a girl of noble birth in Florence.
Over the years, Gioconda grew rich and became a Florentine official. He was even believed to have represented one of Florence’s most powerful families, the Medici. True, he paid a price for that reputation. After the Medici’s expulsion from Florence, he was imprisoned and fined. When the Medici returned, Francesco was released.
According to one version of historians, Lisa’s spouse was not so clean cut. Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti, in their book Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting, suggested that he got rich from the slave trade. Francesco bought girls in North Africa and transported them to Florence, converting them to Christianity in the process. Some of them worked as maids in the house of Gioconda.
Lisa remained married to Francesco for the rest of her life. They had five children, and she also took it upon herself to raise Bartolomeo, Francesco’s son from her first marriage. Lisa’s husband died of the plague at the age of 80. Prior to this, he had made a will in which he returned a dowry to Lisa. In addition, he gave her personal clothes, jewelry, and did everything to secure his widow’s future. But Lisa outlived her husband by only four years.
Noble lady, Courtesan, or Young Man
During Lisa’s lifetime, Florence was the world’s center of art. It was considered honorable among the city’s inhabitants to be the patrons of artists and sculptors. Gioconda was no exception and commissioned a portrait of his wife from Leonardo da Vinci. According to popular belief, he also did it to celebrate the birth of his third child.
Portrait of Mona Lisa Leonardo painted for many years. It is believed that he began it in 1503, but he had to postpone the work for the Battle of Anghiari. The painting traveled with da Vinci until 1516 – only then did he complete it. Although some researchers are certain that the portrait is still incomplete.
Previously, no one knew exactly who Leonardo da Vinci portrayed. The portrait was attributed to at least ten different people. Among them were the artist’s mother, his contemporaries, even a courtesan. There were those who claimed that the portrait depicted a young man, perhaps Da Vinci himself. But in 2005, Armin Schlechter of the University of Heidelberg discovered proof that it was Lisa del Giocondo who posed. It was a note written by Agostino Vespucci in 1503. It said that Leonardo was working on a portrait of Lisa Gioconda.
The details of the painting can tell us something about Mona Lisa. For example, her right hand rests on her left hand, a gesture used to depict faithful wives. Moreover, Lisa is dressed in dark clothing and a veil. This was considered high fashion by the standards of the time. Dark colors, especially black, were difficult to obtain, so fabrics of such hues were expensive.
