Five centuries after Leonardo da Vinci first painted La Gioconda, or the Mona Lisa, her mysterious smile retains its celebrity status. Da Vinci today is in the public eye like no other artist, yet few of us know the compelling story of this priceless world treasure: how she was created; her impact on other artists; the story of her theft; and how, through a mix of luck, history, and her own innate beauty, she came to be regarded as the world's greatest painting. In this engaging story, told largely in pictures and presented in a unique format, acclaimed historian and Mona Lisa scholar Donald Sassoon offers us an intimate look at the painting's history and the genius who gave the Mona Lisa lasting life. From photographs of Florence to paintings by Leonardo's Florentine contemporaries, parodies of the Mona Lisa by Duchamp and Warhol, commercial appropriations and cartoons, Leonardo and the Mona Lisa Story unlocks the history behind the painting

"Learn about the incredible saga of Leonardos Earlier Mona Lisa with this beautifully detailed, 240 page book that includes the historical background, scientific testing, forensic expertise and cutting-edge research in art authentication. It took 500 years to make the paintings story public when you read the book, you will understand why."-- Publisher's description.

What has made the Mona Lisa the most famous picture in the world? Why is it that, of all the 6,000 paintings in the Louvre, it is the only one to be exhibited in a special box, set in concrete and protected by two sheets of bulletproof glass? Why do thousands of visitors throng to see it every day, ignoring the masterpieces which surround it?

Art historians have long debated the question why sources about the origin of the Mona Lisa portrait provide conflicting information. This monograph presents a solution for this quandary: these 16th century sources don't agree because they are not talking about the same painting. If we consider this possibility, that Leonardo painted not one, but two versions of the Mona Lisa, then all of these problems begin to resolve themselves. In fact, throughout his life Leonardo would often return to a motif or composition for a variety of reasons. Thus we have at least two versions of The Virgin of the Rocks, painted by Leonardo with the De Predis brothers in Milan, and two versions of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, painted by Leonardo with his assistants in Florence. In other words, the proposition that Leonardo may have painted not one, but two versions of the Mona Lisa is by no means far-fetched. Nonetheless, it also raises an important question. If Leonardo did paint an earlier version in addition to the Louvre Mona Lisa, where is this portrait today? And how can we determine whether this painting is indeed an autograph, rather than one of the many Mona Lisa versions and copies that are still extant today?The answers to these questions are provided in this book, based on contributions by scholars from around the world. They include Prof. John Asmus of the University of California at San Diego; Prof. Vadim Parfenov at the State Electrotechnical University in St. Petersburg, Russia; Prof. Átila Soares da Costa Filho of the Universidade Cândido Mendes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Prof. Jason Halter of the University of Michigan; and Prof. Robert Meyrick of Aberystwyth University. In addition, this monograph includes contributions by noted art critic Gérard Boudin de l'Arche and two prominent artists, Albert Sauteur and Joe Mullins. The book is edited by Prof. Jean-Pierre Isbouts of Fielding Graduate University at Santa Barbara, CA. His previous publications on Leonardo da Vinci include The Mona Lisa Myth; Young Leonardo: The Evolution of a Revolutionary Artist; and The Da Vinci Legacy, co-authored with Dr. Christopher Brown.

THE Mona Lisa in the Louvre has been accepted for four centuries as the one, only, and original version of the famous portrait of Madonna Lisa Giocondo painted by Leonardo da Vinci. It is difficult to break down a tradition of such long standing, yet this is what is claimed to be done in the following pages. But in order to accomplish this, theories and arguments, no matter how strong and plausible they be, count as nothing unless substantiated by facts and direct contemporaneous evidence, and it is on these latter that the onus probandi lies. The fact that there are two Mona Lisas in existence to-day, both of superlative intrinsic merit, and both the work of Leonardo da Vinci, the one with a record of four centuries behind it, the other which has scarcely been heard of before and has only just emerged from obscurity, creates a Sphinx-like problem not easy to solve. The unknown Isleworth Mona Lisa can, however, afford to stand on her own merits and cast her enigmatic smile on those who taunt her with her lack of pedigree. But convinced of the genuineness of the Isleworth painting, and that upon the authority of the soundest of expert knowledge, I determined to solve the riddle. How I have succeeded I leave the reader to judge. As, however, this treatise is complex and discursive, I purpose here to give a short outline of its whole theory. In 1501 four pictures by Leonardo da Vinci were seen in his studio in Florence. Two of these were the St. Anne and the Madonna with the Spindles; the other two were portraits, on which his pupils were engaged, as was then the common custom, filling in details, in which he also assisted. The two portraits have never hitherto been identified nor accounted for, and they have been gratuitously assumed to have been lost, why or wherefore no one knows; yet, as I prove, Leonardo himself never lost a single drawing, much less a painting. But at this very time, 1501, it is established, beyond cavil, that Leonardo painted the portrait of Madonna Lisa to the order of her husband. Hence I maintain that one of the portraits seen was a Mona Lisa, since there is not the slightest particle of evidence to the contrary. But what was the second portrait? Vasari tells us, fifty years later, that at this very time Leonardo produced the St. Anne and the Mona Lisa portrait, as well as the portrait of another lady in Florence, but as it is proved that this lady died thirty years previously, it could not possibly have been her portrait. As Leonardo, however, almost invariably commenced two versions of each of his works, which he rarely finished, I maintain the second portrait seen in 1501 was a second version of the Mona Lisa. In 1505 Raphael saw the Mona Lisa in Florence, and made, for his own purpose, a study of it which now hangs in the Louvre. The St. Anne and a Mona Lisa are also to-day in the possession of the Louvre authorities. But this Louvre Mona Lisa, I prove conclusively, cannot be the one from which Raphael drew his study, and this shows there must have been another version, which Raphael saw and studied, and it was this version that went unfinished to Madonna Lisa's husband, who had commissioned it from the master. Again at Cloux in France in 1517, some eighteen months before his death, Leonardo showed the Cardinal of Aragon the St. Anne and the portrait of a Florentine lady, which he described as painted to the order of Guiliano de Medici.