Mona Lisa

"For nearly five hundred years the painting - and the smile on the face of the sitter - has been a source of mystery, speculation and reverence. In this new book Donald Sassoon describes not only the Mona Lisa and its history, but its mythology, and the processes which have combined to raise it to its current unrivalled level of fame. He examines Leonardo's innovative techniques; the problems concerning the identity of the sitter; what happened to the painting after it left Italy when Leonardo joined King Francois I's court in France; the copies made in the seventeenth century; its…