Did Salai Own a Second Mona Lisa?

Image: Leonardo da Vinci, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Were there actually multiple Mona Lisas?

This is a question that dates back almost as far as the origin of the painting itself. In 1550, Giorgio Vasari describes a painting he refers to as “Monna Lisa” (Clark, 1973). However, after reading the description, it becomes clear that either Vasari saw a painting much different from the Mona Lisa we know today or that he simply embellished yet another story for his book. While Vasari praises Leonardo’s talent for creating a lifelike painting, he describes the subject as a beautiful woman with a “smile so pleasing that the sight of it was a thing more divine than human” (Clark, 1973, p. 145). This does not appear to be the same portrait of Lisa del Gioconda with her world-famous, demure smirk.

The traditional account is that circa 1503, Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint a portrait of his wife Lisa. What happened to the painting afterwards continues to be a historical mystery.  It is believed that Leonardo continued developing the portrait for several years after beginning it. Clark (1973) explains that this was not unusual for the artist, as Leonardo sometimes spent longer than a decade on a single project.  

Leonardo spent the final years of his life in France under the patronage of King Francis I. By the time Vasari wrote about the portrait in 1550, he claimed that it belonged to the French king. However, the surviving records do not clearly explain when or how Francis acquired it. One possible answer appears in a financial record connected to Salai, Leonardo’s longtime companion and assistant. 

One such piece of evidence is a treasury document from 1518. This financial record indicates that the treasurer of Francis I disbursed a substantial sum to Gian Giacomo Caprotti, the artist’s longtime associate known as Salai, for the delivery of several “paintings on panel.” Although the specific works are not named in the ledger, some scholars have suggested that the transaction involved Leonardo originals that later entered the French royal collection, possibly including the Mona Lisa (Greenstein, 2004). 

That interpretation seems straightforward until Salai’s later estate records enter the story. Salai died unexpectedly in 1524 without leaving a will. When his property was divided between his sisters the following year, the inventory listed twelve paintings connected to subjects from Leonardo’s workshop. Among them was a painting “called La Joconda,” valued at 100 scudi. That was an extraordinary amount, roughly half the assessed value of Salai’s house. Shell and Sironi (1991) argued that such a high valuation suggests that at least some of the paintings in the inventory may have been originals by Leonardo rather than ordinary copies made by Salai or another workshop artist.

This creates the mystery.  If Francis I had already acquired Leonardo’s Mona Lisa from Salai in 1518, why did Salai’s estate still contain a valuable painting called La Joconda in 1525?

One possibility is that Francis bought Leonardo’s original while Salai retained a high-quality copy. Leonardo’s workshop produced multiple versions and copies of important compositions, so the title alone does not prove that Salai’s painting was another original.  A second possibility is that Salai still possessed Leonardo’s painting when he died and that it entered the French royal collection later, perhaps after being sold by his heirs. Shell and Sironi favored a version of this argument, noting that Francis I employed agents to acquire Italian artworks during the years after Salai’s death (Shell and Sironi, 1991).

So, were there actually multiple Mona Lisas? The surviving evidence does not provide a clear answer. Salai may have owned a copy of the painting, or the work listed in his estate may have been Leonardo’s original before it entered the French royal collection. It is also possible that more than one version of the portrait existed within Leonardo’s workshop. What the documents do prove is that the history of the Mona Lisa is far less certain than the familiar story suggests. Until more evidence is discovered, the identity of Salai’s La Joconda remains one more mystery surrounding Leonardo’s most famous painting.

Further Reading

Clark, K. (1973). Mona Lisa. The Burlington Magazine, 115(840), 144–151.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/877242 

Greenstein, J. M. (2004). Leonardo, Mona Lisa and “La Gioconda”: Reviewing the evidence. Artibus

et Historiae, 25(50), 17–38. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1483789 

Shell, J., & Sironi, G. (1991). Salaì and Leonardo’s legacy. The Burlington Magazine, 133(1055), 95–

108. https://www.jstor.org/stable/884580