Isleworth Mona Lisa
According to Leonardo's early biographer Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo had started to paint "Mona Lisa" in 1503, but "left it unfinished". However, a fully finished painting of a "certain Florentine lady" surfaced again in 1517, shortly before Leonardo's death and in his private possession. The latter painting almost certainly is the one that now hangs in the Louvre. Based on this contradiction, supporters of the authenticity of the "Isleworth Mona Lisa" claim it is the unfinished "Mona Lisa", made at least partially by Leonardo, and the Louvre "Mona Lisa" a later version of it, made by Leonardo for his own use.
In Search of Mona Lisa
The album takes its title from a deeply personal experience that Carlos Santana had when he visited the Louvre Museum in Paris for the first time and saw Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece with his own eyes. The artist explains to "Rolling Stone" that although he had been playing concerts in Paris since the early Seventies, he had never visited the Louvre until 2016. And once he did, he noticed a line like "you'd see for Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Rihanna or Adele... I was like, 'Damn, "Mona Lisa's" really popular worldwide to this day.'"