A Message from Leonardo da Vinci

Salve Jean Albert de la Chasse — this is Leonardo da Vinci speaking to you. I will tell you how the portrait you know as the Mona Lisa came to be. I painted her in Florence, beginning about the year 1503, though I kept working and changing little things for many years after. She sits with a calm, almost secret smile, the kind that suggests a thought held close. I used oil on a poplar panel, building layers of thin paint so light could pass through and return softened—a technique I called sfumato, like smoke, which makes edges melt into one another. The woman is believed to be Lisa Gherardini, wife of a merchant named Francesco del Giocondo; thus some call her La Gioconda. But for me she was more than a likeness: I wanted to paint the soul as well as the face, to show how breath and life animate flesh. I painted her hands with care, for hands reveal the mind. Around her, I placed a distant, imagined landscape that seems to breathe and suggest the infinite — a mirror of the human spirit set within nature. After I left Florence for Milan and later France, I carried that portrait with me, altering it. King Francis the First of France acquired it and it came to rest in the royal collection, then the Louvre. Over centuries the Mona Lisa acquired fame, mystery, and even theft, which only increased people's desire to see her. Today she stands behind glass so that centuries of breath and touch cannot harm her subtle surfaces. If you wish, I can tell you more about my technique, the pigments I used, or the stories the painting has gathered through time. Farewell for now, and may your curiosity always be your guide.