In an age when portraiture was increasingly popular, Leonardo’s unusual approach—giving a half-length, closely focused view of the sitter—earned immediate praise.
The onset of the 15th century leads to the High Renaissance and the most famous work of art in the world today: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa(1503–06). Coming of age in Florence and Milan, Leonardo had already completed other illustrious works—the Vitruvian Man(ca. 1409) and the The Last Supper(1495–98) are prime examples—when the merchant Francesco del Giocondo commissioned him to paint a portrait of his wife, Lisa Gherardini, in 1503. (The work is sometimes called “La Giocondo,” hence the painting’s French nickname “La Joconde”). In an age when portraiture was increasingly popular, Leonardo’s unusual approach—giving a half-length, closely focused view of the sitter—earned immediate praise. Relating the sitter to forms in the landscape behind her and layering paint in an innovative way that created the soft, smoky effect called sfumato, Leonardo also endowed Mona Lisa with an enigmatic smile that has become her most alluring feature.