Printable sheet
Mona Lisa by Leonardo with folded hands, a sheer veil and a landscape of water and rocks behind. An art printable for kids and families; free PDF.
Printable sheet
Free for personal and educational use
Download PDFPrintThe Mona Lisa with long wavy hair, a sheer veil, a pleated dress and folded hands, in front of a landscape of water, rocks and paths.
Use browns, olive greens and muted blues to give it an old-world look.
Write an imaginary letter from Lisa asking Leonardo to finish her portrait.
In Italy the painting is called La Gioconda, and in France it is La Joconde.
The Mona Lisa by Leonardo shows a real woman with a real name. According to records from the time, she was Lisa Gherardini, a young woman from Florence married to Francesco del Giocondo, a wealthy silk merchant. That is why Italians call the painting La Gioconda.
The name Mona Lisa has a story too. Mona is a shortened form of madonna, an old Italian word meaning my lady. Francesco is thought to have ordered the portrait around 1503, possibly to celebrate the birth of a son or a move into a new home.
Lisa never actually received her portrait. Leonardo kept working on it for years, adding incredibly thin layers of paint, and carried it with him wherever he went. When King Francis I of France invited him to live there, Leonardo settled near Amboise with the painting. He died in 1519, and the portrait became part of the French royal collection.
That is why the Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre in Paris instead of in Florence. The dreamy landscape behind her, full of winding paths, a bridge and water, does not line up perfectly: the horizon is higher on one side than the other, one more detail that adds to her air of mystery.
