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.
Mona Lisa replicas and reinterpretations
A replica of "Mona Lisa" publicized as the ""world's smallest"" was painted by Andrew Nichols of New Hampshire (USA) in 2011, intending "to break the record." Recreated at a 70:1 ratio, the miniature "Mona Lisa" measures approximately 1/4 by 7/16 inches (7 by 11 mm). Although his rendition drew media attention, it was never officially reported whether he had, in fact, broken any existing record. In 2013, a far smaller version of the painting, entitled the "Mini Lisa", was created by a Georgia Institute of Technology student named Keith Carroll. The replica was created to demonstrate a new scientific technique called thermochemical nanolithography (TCNL). The "Mini Lisa" was just wide, about 1/25,000th the size of the original.