#enigmatic expression

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The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519).

Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, and the most parodied work of art in the world."

The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.

The Mona Lisa is one of the most valuable paintings in the world.

It holds the Guinness World Record for the highest known painting insurance valuation in history at US$100 million in 1962, equivalent to $1 billion as of 2023.

Madame de Loynes, 1862, by Amaury-Duval -  Musée d'Orsay

Marie-Anne Detourbay, aka Mademoiselle Jeanne de Tourbey, and by marriage the Countess of Loynes was a half-socialite who held an influential literary and political salon in Paris under the Second Empire and the Third Republic.  A half-socialite is a woman whose status oscillates between a courtesan and a mistress maintained by a wealthy man.  Though technically married to the Count de Loynes, they never had a genuine relationship as he was in America most of the time.  The countess later became the mistress of the French writer and drama critic Jules Lemaître, 15 years her junior.

Photos by Charles Reeza