The Mystic Smile This article was about the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is a portrait of a real flesh-and-blood woman named Lisa Gheradini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant named Francesco del Giocondo. The Mona Lisa was painted in oil, on wood between the years of 1503 and 1507 by Leonardo da Vinci, one of the three greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance. The picture draws an astounding 5.5 million visitors to the Louvre each year. …showed first 75 words of 327 total…

…showed last 75 words of 327 total…has receded into the distance. In these changed circumstances, it is celebrity and commercialism that keep the Mona Lisa alive. The Mona Lisa may be the most "popular" painting in the world today, but it remains to be seen whether it can survive such popularity, in other words it has been viewed by generations of art lovers but could eventually lose its place to the next new thing. Source: New Republic, 7/22/2002, Vol. 227 Issue 4, p41, 5p