Leonardo Da Vinci - Rectangular Crystal Paperweight Mona Lisa (1503)

About Leonardo Da Vinci - Rectangular Crystal Paperweight Mona Lisa (1503)

This beautiful hand-cut paperweight features the iconic masterpiece "Portrait by Lisa Gherardini" also known as the "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo Da Vinci. This rectangular crystal paperweight includes a felted bottom for a sophisticated finish, and it comes in an elegant gift box. Currently, on display at the Louvre Museum, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is the world’s most famous portrait and one of the History of Art’s most popular works, identified by the art historian Giorgio Vasari as Lisa di Antonio Maria Gherardini, wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo. The uniqueness of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa resides in the lack of jewelry or lavish attributes that would identify the sitter as an aristocratic woman. Although Renaissance etiquette dictated women must never look directly into a man’s eye, Leonardo masterfully empowers the sitter with a self-assuring gaze immediately directed at the viewer. The Mona Lisa is represented sitting at a logia, in front of a mysterious uninhabited landscape through which the viewer evidences Leonardo’s fascination with atmospheric perspective and his traditional use of sfumato which influenced artists for generations after him.