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
Mimicking the heavy pixelation of a highly magnified computer file, Canadian artist Robert McKinnon assembled 315 Rubik's Cubes into a 36 by 48 inch "Mona Lisa" mosaic, an effect dubbed "Rubik's Cubism" by French artist Invader.
Similarly, colored Lego "bricks" have been employed to replicate "Mona Lisa" in a mosaic motif.
A 2011 exhibition titled "Da Vinci, The Genius" at the Frazier Museum in Louisville, Kentucky attracted attention by having a "Mona Lisa" constructed by Lego artist Brian Korte.
Known as "Brick Art", so-called "pro" Lego builders such as Eric Harshbarger have made multiple replicas of Mona Lisa.
Matching the approximate 21 by 30 inch size (535 x 760+ mm) of Leonardo's original requires upwards of 5,000 standard Lego "bricks", but replicas measuring 6 by 8 feet have been built, requiring more than 30,000 bricks.