Mona Lisa
The painting is thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. Recent academic work suggests that it would not have been started before 1513. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1797.
Seymour Reit
Reit wrote over 80 books, primarily for children, on a variety of historical, technical, natural, and other subjects. One of his titles for adults, "The Day They Stole the Mona Lisa", written in 1981, is about the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. In the book, Reit asserted that there were "two" genuine "Mona Lisas" in the world: the one in the Louvre, and an earlier version of the work painted by Leonardo da Vinci which was being held in a bank vault in New Jersey (the so-called "Vernon Mona Lisa"). A long-planned movie adaptation of the book has never materialized, although the Internet Movie Database lists a movie by the same title tentatively planned for 2009.