Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, was an Italian statesman, the de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic, and the most powerful patron of Renaissance culture in Italy. Lorenzo held the balance of power within the Italic League, an alliance of states that stabilized political conditions on the Italian Peninsula for decades, and his life coincided with the mature phase of the Italian Renaissance and the golden age of Florence. As a patron, he is best known for his sponsorship of artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo. On the foreign policy front, Lorenzo manifested a clear plan to stem the territorial ambitions of Pope Sixtus IV, in the name of the balance of the Italic League of 1454. For these reasons, Lorenzo was the subject of the Pazzi conspiracy (1478), in which his brother Giuliano was assassinated. The Peace of Lodi of 1454 that he supported among the various Italian states collapsed with his death. He is buried in the Medici Chapel in Florence.
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, [and] the most parodied work of art in the world." The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.
Giuliano de' Medici was the second son of Piero de' Medici and Lucrezia Tornabuoni. As co-ruler of Florence, with his brother Lorenzo the Magnificent, he complemented his brother's image as the "patron of the arts" with his own image as the handsome, sporting "golden boy". He was killed in a plot known as the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478.
Giuliano da Sangallo was an Italian sculptor, architect and military engineer active during the Italian Renaissance. He is known primarily for being the favored architect of Lorenzo de' Medici, his patron. In this role, Giuliano designed a villa for Lorenzo as well as a monastery for Augustinians and a church where a miracle was said to have taken place. Additionally, Giuliano was commissioned to build multiple structures for Pope Julius II and Pope Leo X. Leon Battista Alberti and Filippo Brunelleschi heavily influenced Sangallo and in turn, he influenced other important Renaissance figures such as Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, his brother Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, and his sons, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Francesco da Sangallo.
Lisa del Giocondo was an Italian noblewoman and member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany. Her name was given to the Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the Italian Renaissance.
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance painter and polymath who achieved legendary fame and iconic status within his own lifetime. His renown primarily rests upon his brilliant achievements as a painter, as his Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are two of the most famous artworks ever created. But da Vinci is also known for his diverse skills as a scientist, inventor, engineer, theorist, sculptor, architect, descriptions and study of the human body, and more. He became so highly valued during his lifetime that the King of France bore him home like a trophy of war, supported him in his old age and, according to legend, cradled his head as he died.
The Isleworth Mona Lisa is an early 16th-century oil on canvas painting depicting the same subject as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, though with the subject depicted as being a younger age. The painting is thought to have been brought from Italy to England in the 1780s, and came into public view in 1913 when the English connoisseur Hugh Blaker acquired it from a manor house in Somerset, where it was thought to have been hanging for over a century. The painting would eventually adopt its unofficial name of Isleworth Mona Lisa from Blaker's studio being in Isleworth, West London. Since the 1910s, experts in various fields, as well as the collectors who have acquired ownership of the painting, have asserted that the major elements of the painting are the work of Leonardo himself, as an earlier version of the Mona Lisa.
Francesco de' Pazzi was a Florentine banker, a member of the Pazzi noble family, and one of the instigators of the Pazzi conspiracy, a plot to displace the Medici family as rulers of the Florentine Republic. His uncle, Jacopo de' Pazzi, was one of the main organizers of the conspiracy.
The Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) left thousands of pages of writings and drawings but rarely made any references to his personal life. The resulting uncertainty, combined with mythologized anecdotes from his lifetime, has resulted in much speculation and interest in Leonardo's personal life. Particularly, personal relationships, philosophy, religion, vegetarianism, left-handedness, and appearance.
The 16th-century portrait Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo da Vinci, has been the subject of a considerable deal of speculation.
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, better known as Salaì was an Italian artist and pupil of Leonardo da Vinci from 1490 to 1518. Salaì entered Leonardo's household at the age of ten. Salai created paintings under the name of Andrea Salaì. He was described as one of Leonardo's students and lifelong companion and servant and was the model for Leonardo's St. John the Baptist, Bacchus, and Angelo incarnato.
Leonardo is a British action-adventure television series which aired on the CBBC for two series between 2011 and 2012. Set in 15th-century Florence, the show follows the adventures of a teenage Leonardo da Vinci played by Jonathan Bailey.
The Smile (2008) is a Young Adult novel by Donna Jo Napoli that details a slice of the life of Monna Elisabetta, better known as the Mona Lisa. Some historical figures enter the plot, including Leonardo da Vinci and members of the famous Medici family. Set in Renaissance Florence, it follows Elisabetta's life up to the moment she models for da Vinci's painting, and suggests the secret behind her famous smile.
The Gherardini family of Montagliari was one of the most prominent historical Italian noble families from Tuscany, Italy. Through the Amideis, the family was of Roman descent. Between the 9th and 14th centuries, they played an important role in Tuscany. Its influence was also felt in the Veneto and Emilia regions between the 16th and 18th centuries, and during the Italian Risorgimento as well as in today's Italian politics and economy. The family's restless and fighting nature has aroused the curiosity of many historians of the Middle Ages. Originating from feudal tradition, it was one of the founding families of the Republic of Florence.
Here below is a chronology of fictional and semi-fictional stories that revolve, either wholly or partially, around the famous Mona Lisa, a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Renaissance in Florence. The years listed on the left refer to the year of release of these works of fiction.
The two–Mona Lisa theory is a longstanding theory proposed by various historians, art experts, and others that Leonardo da Vinci painted two versions of the Mona Lisa. Several of these experts have further concluded that examination of historical documents indicates that one version was painted several years before the second.
The Mona Lisa Myth is a multimedia project consisting of a 2013 book and a 2014 documentary film, produced in tandem by Renaissance scholar and art historian Jean-Pierre Isbouts, with physician and art collector Christopher Heath Brown as co-author of the book and as a producer of the documentary, the latter with narration by Morgan Freeman. The book and film each examine the history of the Mona Lisa, and the longstanding theory that the Isleworth Mona Lisa is an earlier version of the same painting, also by Leonardo da Vinci.
Hermitage Mona Lisa is a painting on canvas, which was made by an unknown painter in the mid-16th century and is located in the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg. It was transferred from the Antikvariat All-Union Association and entered the Hermitage in 1931.
There are two theories revolving around the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci which postulate that the subject of the painting was actually a man. Leonardo is known for having a number of conspiracy theories formed around his life and his art, and the Mona Lisa has attracted an especially high number of these. Many of the theories surrounding the Mona Lisa stem from how art historians have still not conclusively determined the sitter's identity. The commonly accepted explanation is that she was Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a silk merchant from Florence named Francesco del Giocondo; however, without irrefutable proof there are still an array of alternative theories.
