What is the value of the Mona Lisa? (2024)

FAQs

What is the value of the Mona Lisa? ›

The Mona Lisa is priceless. Any speculative price (some say over a billion dollars!) would probably be so high that not one person would be able or willing to purchase and maintain the painting. Moreover, the Louvre Museum would probably never sell it.

Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as having the highest insurance value for a painting. On permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on 14 December 1962. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$1010 million in 2023.

Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci

Salvator Mundi, translated to “Savior of the World,” is not only the world's most expensive painting—it's possibly the most controversial painting, as well.

It's undeniable that the Mona Lisa has value in terms of quality. I mean, Leonardo da Vinci is a freaking genius after all. But its price tag results from a combination of factors, including its historical significance, artistic merit, and cultural importance.

The most expensive painting ever sold is the Salvator Mundi, the Saviour of the World in English, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. It was painted in the 1500s and sold for $450.3 million in 2017. The painting was acquired by Mohamed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

Where is the real Mona Lisa kept? The Mona Lisa hangs behind bulletproof glass in a gallery of the Louvre Museum in Paris, where it has been a part of the museum's collection since 1804. It was part of the royal collection before becoming the property of the French people during the Revolution (1787–99).

The Mona Lisa is priceless. Any speculative price (some say over a billion dollars!) would probably be so high that not one person would be able or willing to purchase and maintain the painting. Moreover, the Louvre Museum would probably never sell it.

Though Mr. Bezos could theoretically afford it, the Mona Lisa isn't for sale, and France likely wouldn't be willing to give it up. “As a general rule, the French Heritage Code states that works in French national collections (e.g., the Louvre) are deemed to be French national treasures.

One of a kind? Actually, there's at least four different versions painted by Leonardo da Vinci and his students. But the one we all know and love is at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. The others can be found at the Prado Museum and in numerous private collections.

Louvre Museum (since 1797)

Mona Lisa / Location

What's so special about Mona Lisa? ›

Indeed, the Mona Lisa is a very realistic portrait. The subject's softly sculptural face shows Leonardo's skillful handling of sfumato, an artistic technique that uses subtle gradations of light and shadow to model form, and shows his understanding of the skull beneath the skin.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Mona Lisa was relatively unknown. But its fate changed when in 1911, it was stolen from the Louvre. The high profile theft helped publicise and popularise the painting.

Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, depicting Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the World (the painting's English title), sold at a Christie's auction in New York in 2017 for US$450 million, making it the most expensive artwork to be auctioned in the world.

The Starry Night's home is at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But even the lowest price for the top 100 works by the artist sold at auction is a whopping $17 million, according to the Artnet Price Database. In 2021 alone, a peak year for auctions, sales of Picasso's paintings reached nearly $532 million for just 60 works sold, an average of about $8.8 million per work.

Vasari, Da Vinci's biographer and Renaissance commentator said the Mona Lisa after 4 years of work was still not finished. ” Leonardo undertook to paint for Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of Mona Lisa his wife, but having spent four years upon it, left it unfinished.

The "Mona Lisa" was purchased by the French King, Francis I, for 4,000 gold ducats, either from da Vinci himself or, after the artist's death, from da Vinci's heir, Francesco Melzi.

Unlike some artwork of the sixteenth century, the Mona Lisa is a very realistic portrait of a very real human being. Alicja Zelazko of Encyclopedia Britannica attributes this to Leonardo's skill with a brush, and his use of art techniques that were new and exciting during the Renaissance.

If the law of France was ever to change according to the “Guiness World Records”, the Mona Lisa was valued at 100 million dollars in 1962 for insurance purposes. With inflation taken into account, today's value of the Mona Lisa would be nearing a billion – 1.5 billion pounds.