Mona Lisa Coloring Page

The Mona Lisa is smaller than most people expect, about 77 by 53 centimetres, and she hangs behind glass in the Louvre in Paris. Leonardo da Vinci started painting her around 1503.

The woman in the painting was probably Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a cloth merchant in Florence. "Mona" is short for "madonna," which just meant "my lady." Leonardo never handed the painting over. He kept it for years and took it with him when he moved to France.

In 1911 she was stolen. The thief was a handyman who simply walked out of the Louvre with her, and she was missing for two years. The news made her more famous than ever. Since then she's been copied, joked about and reimagined by artists.