Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)

           "If u call painting mute poetry , poetry can also called blind painting .Now think, which is more damaging affliction, that of the blind man or that of the mute?…If the poet serve the senses by the way of the ear , the painter does so by the way of the eyes, a worthier sense."  Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519).
          Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)  is the most famous work of Leonardo da Vinci. One of the noblest citizen of Florence, ordered from Leonardo a portrait of his third wife Lisa di Antonio Maria di Noldo Gherardini.Leonardo started to work at this painting in 1503. At this time Mona Lisa was twenty-four year old. He worked at the portrait for the next four years. When Leonardo left Florence in 1507 he did not sell the painting to the orderer but he kept it for himself.
Leonardo arrived with the painting in his baggage in France in the year 1516. Leonardo sold the painting in France to King Francis I., who bought it for the castle in Amboise. In the following time Mona Lisa came to Fontainbleau, Paris, Versailles and then to the collection of Ludwig XIV. After the revolution in France the painting got a new home in the Louvre. Napoleon took it away from there and hung it up in his bedroom. When Napoleon was banished Mona Lisa returned into the great Louvre in Paris.
On 21 August 1911 Mona Lisa was stolen from an italian thief, who brought the painting to Italy, where it emerged two years later in Florence. After some exhibitions Mona Lisa returned again to Paris. An acid attempt damaged the lower half of the painting in 1956.Today the painting is behind bullet-proof glass in Paris in the Louvre .

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