When Leonardo began painting the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of the wealthy Florentine cloth merchant Francesco del Giocondo, in 1503, little did he know just how much employment he would generate for future art historians. From theories concerning her enigmatic smile, to the painting being a self-portrait of Leonardo in drag, to her possibly being pregnant, just about everything that could possibly have been written about the Mona Lisa seems to have been written about her. While already famous at the beginning of the 20th century, it was the theft and subsequent recovery of the “Mona Lisa” that launched it into the stratosphere of notoriety. Buona visione!