Mona Lisa

The master of all masters - need we say more?!  Try to get behind the secret of her smile, while painting this lovely lady.  According to Wikipedia it is “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world." Wow, quite a mouthful.

This canvas is not as hard as you would think, I would recommend it for anyone from the age of 15, which is the same age Lisa Gherardino got married and became Lisa del Giocondo.  A few years after their marriage her husband commissioned a painting from Leonardo da Vinci and long story short, today it is one of most famous paintings and people from all over the world flock to the Louvre to view the tiny panel.

‘Legend and fantasy surround the most famous face in art. It was said in the 16th century that Leonardo hired musicians to play for his model so she would smile, and not look serious like most people in portraits.  Yet scientific research seems to show she did not originally smile – the lovely expression was invented by Leonardo as he reworked his painting.  Nor is there any evidence to support modern speculation that she is really a man, or a self-portrait.  What the anatomist Leonardo created is rather a homage to the power of expression, a study in how a face is lit up by a simple motion of the lips.

The painting currently resides in its private $7 million climates controlled, bulletproof glass enclosed room.’ -The Guardian

Lisa is classified as not too hard and not too easy, with her 21 colours and slightly larger paint areas.  This 40 x 50cm canvas is a good one to try if you want to transition from the easy paintings to the more challenging ones.  Each box contains a stretched, printed and numbered canvas, paint, brushes and a page detailing the numbers for an extra reference.