The background story and research history of the case study “Mona Lisa”: the volume “Is the Louvre Mona Lisa Leonardo’s Second Version?”

Abstract

The research carried out over the years on the theme “Attribution and authentication of artworks” and, therefore, on the case-study “Mona Lisa”, as topical as it is strongly debated, is continued with the first and the second volume entitled: “Is the Louvre Mona Lisa Leonardo’s second version?” 500 years of historical-bibliographic references, taken from publications by scholars of the humanistic and experimental sciences, relating to the question posed in the title of the volume. With reasonable certainty it has been proved that Leonardo executed two distinct and successive paintings of the Mona Lisa with different aesthetic-visual and structural characteristics confirmed by analytical investigations as well as historical-bibliographic examinations. It refers to the first unfinished version of the younger Lisa del Giocondo referable to the painting, Isleworth Mona Lisa, called Earlier Mona Lisa, and to the successive version, that is the Louvre Mona Lisa, finished, as a result of a more advanced pictorial technique and different structure.

Keywords

• mona lisa
• attribution and authentication of works of art