The blurred imaginary landscape as the chosen background enhance the portrait more distinctly. I imagine that this beautiful yet mysterious creation represents an ageless truth of the universe. All the mysteries of the earth and our existence can never be unravelled completely. The Mystery will remain!
Mona Lisa, the most visited and most written about painting is just 77cm by 53cm in dimension. Among many suggestions, this painting is thought most likely to be the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant and is believed to have been painted between 1503 to 1506, although Leonardo may have continued working on it till 1517.
The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, by a former employee who believed the painting belonged to Italy. The thief walked out of the gallery with the picture underneath the painter's smock. He was apprehended by police two years later, and the painting was safely returned.
Time has not chilled Mona Lisa or shall I say the painting has liberated time forever!
The mysterious smile has inspired countless writers, singers and painters and would continue to do so.
Perhaps Mona Lisa is the testimony of conflux of an artist's reality, fantasy, memory and imagination.