Isleworth Mona Lisa

As recent studies have shown, the legendary Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci, in fact, painted not one "Mona Lisa", but two.
It turned out that the painting, which for several decades was considered a copy of "Mona Lisa", written by an unknown author, belongs to the brush of da Vinci himself. The piece, titled "The Isleworth Mona Lisa," was recovered from a safe in a Swiss bank and re-analyzed. The girl depicted in the picture looks clearly younger than the classic "Mona Lisa".

Swiss art critics have subjected the canvas to radiocarbon analysis. His results made it possible to refute the assumption that the work was a later copy of the well-known masterpiece. It turned out that the Isleworth Mona Lisa was painted between 1410 and 1455, that is, much earlier than the painting, which until recently was considered the original.
The figure of the Isleworth Mona Lisa is very similar to the figure of La Mona Lisa, the composition and lighting are also the same. However, the face of the Isleworth Mona Lisa is clearly younger, suggesting that she is an earlier version of the painting.
According to Giorgio Vasari, an early biographer of many Renaissance artists, Leonardo began painting The Mona Lisa in 1503, but “left it unfinished”. Nevertheless, a fully finished portrait of "a certain Florentine lady" is mentioned privately by Leonardo in 1517, shortly before the painter's death
Another art historian, Giovanni Lomazzo, in his treatise (1584), mentions “La Gioconda and Mona Lisa”, which suggests that initially these names were not synonymous and were about two different paintings.
Experts from the Mona Lisa Foundation believe that the painting depicts Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a silk merchant from Florence, who commissioned the painting at the very beginning of the 16th century. In 1503-1505, it was not La Gioconda from the Louvre that was written, but the Isleworth Mona Lisa. Leonardo did not have time to finish it before his departure from Italy in 1506 and sent the customer unfinished. As for the "La Gioconda" from the Louvre, it was written in France much later, around 1516.