Mona Monday: A Lisa by Any Other Name
What's the Mona Lisa's real name? It's not what you think.
The Mona Lisa is perhaps the single best-known painting in the world. But who is it a portrait of? Some say it’s a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci himself, perhaps expressing his feminine side, which they say he had.
Others say it’s a portrait of Leonardo’s ward – a young man named Salai – who may have been his lover.
But the accepted view is that it’s the portrait of a young mother named…
…Lisa Gherardini, who was the wife of Francesco Del Giocondo, a wealthy silk merchant.
This is why she’s referred to in Italian as La Gioconda. Or in French, La Joconde. That’s the painting’s real name.
Mona Lisa is just a nickname. It’s easy to understand the LISA part, but where does MONA come from?
Well, it’s short for MADONNA LISA, which itself is short for MIA DONNA LISA, which is Italian for MY LADY LISA. A term of respect for a married Italian woman at that time. So she’s Madonna…Mia Donna…My Lady Lisa. Or as we all know her…
Monna Lisa. No, that’s not a typo. The correct way to spell Monna (a contraction of Madonna) is with two n’s. That’s how the Louvre officially spells it.
Experts claim that Leonardo never finished the portrait so he never gave it to Francesco and Lisa del Giocondo. Instead, he took it with him when he was hired to work at the Court of King Francis I in France .
The King is said to have acquired the painting from Leonardo or his heirs, which is why the Mona Lisa is in France today.
Personally, I think that the reason Leonardo kept the Mona Lisa was not because the painting wasn’t finished, but because the del Giocondo’s hated it. But we’ll talk about that next Monday.