The Secret Battle Over Mona Lisa’s Prettier ‘Twin’
Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre. But a second, earlier painting is at the heart of a multi-million-dollar battle to prove its authenticity and ownership.
by Barbie Latza Nadeau
ROME—When the long-awaited Leonardo da Vinci exhibition celebrating the Italian master’s life opened in the Louvre in Paris this week, two paintings were noticeably missing from the exhibit hall—and they are both of the same woman.
Despite being one of Leonardo’s most famous works, the Louvre decided not to relocate the “Mona Lisa” from her recently renovated viewing room to the exhibit space created to mark the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death. Visitors will instead have to traipse across a hall through the selfie-taking crowds to see her where she normally hangs.
The second painting that Leonardo aficionados will miss is what many believe is an earlier version of the “Mona Lisa,” which shows a much younger—and dare we say—prettier version of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, who commissioned the work in the early 1500s.
The existence of an earlier “Mona Lisa” has dogged art experts for centuries.