Integrate the information on the identity of Mona Lisa given in the two passages below into your own
paragraph on
the topic, using a combination of paraphrase and quotation, and documenting your use of the sources using the
APA format for in-text citations. You must quote at least once from each source and use your own language when
paraphrasing. Your paragraph should be about 150 words long.
She presents an unresolved riddle after almost 500 years. Her identity remains uncertain; her smile is still an enigma.
The “Mona Lisa” may be the world’s most famous painting, the most analyzed, romanticized, satirized, and
appropriated, but she is also unknowable. She returns our gaze, her secrets intact.
The first to mention her was the Italian historian Giorgio Vasari. In his monumental account of the Italian artists of
his time, he reported her appearance in minute detail. But he is inaccurate, and the errors are puzzling until you learn
that he never saw the picture.
Much else in Vasari’s account has been unpicked, including the identity of the sitter. He tells us that she was Lisa
Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo – Monna Lisa. But the notion that she was just a Florentine
housewife does not content everyone. Various arguments have been put forward to give her a more aristocratic or
idealized identity.
The problem of identification is compounded by Leonardo’s decision to keep the portrait. When he left Italy in 1516
to become court decorator for Francois I of France, he took the Mona Lisa with him, possibly unfinished. Leonardo
had no heirs, and this famous Italian painting remained in France.
It became part of the royal collection and might have languished unknown had history not played an ace. The
Revolution turned the Louvre, formerly a palace, into a public art gallery. Suddenly the Mona Lisa found herself
owned by the French state and housed in arguably the most famous museum in the world. Writers began to circle
around her, making a cult of Leonardo, trying to analyze the source of her power. She both enchanted and disturbed,
becoming a devouring temptress.
Source:
Spalding, F. & Nemos, G. (2001, Mar 29). Enduring riddle of a mysterious woman. The Independent, p. C3-4.
Historians agree that Leonardo commenced the painting of Mona Lisa in 1503, working on it for approximately four
years and keeping it himself for some years after. Supposedly this was because Mona Lisa was Leonardo’s favorite
painting and he hated to part with it. Whatever the reason, much later it was sold to the King of France for four
thousand gold crowns. What is certain is that the painting was never passed onto the rightful owner, that being the
man who originally commissioned and presumably paid for it.
Who was the lady in question? Currently, researchers remain uncertain of the sitter’s identity with some claiming
she was Isabella of Aragon, the widowed Duchess of Milan; they point out the ‘widow’s veil’ on her head as
supporting evidence. Others conclude she was the mistress of Guiliano de’ Medici, but the veil on her head may well
be a symbol of chastity, commonly shown at the time in portraits of married women. The path shown in the painting
may also be the ‘path of virtue’, which would be unlikely to appear in a painting of a mistress. It is probable that she
was Mona Lisa Gherardini, the third wife of wealthy silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. At this stage Lisa
would have been over 24 years of age, by the standards of the time she was not in any way considered particularly
beautiful, though Leonardo saw certain qualities which have now made her the most heavily insured woman in
history.
The most unusual suggestion is that Mona Lisa was really a man in disguise, perhaps being a form of self-portrait
and the fact of Leonardo himself. Computer tests show some of the facial features match well that of another self-
portrait of Leonardo. Some copies of the Mona Lisa also show the sitter as a male.
Source:
Mona Lisa’s many faces and phantasms. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://lairweb.org.nz/leonardo/mona
