Writer argues Leonardo may have painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa

A writer has argued that Leonardo da Vinci may have painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa, citing an 18th-century engraving, a full‑scale preparatory drawing at Chantilly and contemporary accounts from Leonardo’s later years in France. The case begins with a John Boydell engraving of a “Joconda” issued in 18th‑century Britain that shows a woman identical in pose to the Louvre Mona Lisa but naked from the waist up; that image was based on a painting once in Sir Robert Walpole’s collection at Houghton Hall and later sold to Catherine the Great.

The article notes contemporaneous testimony: Giorgio Vasari’s account of Leonardo using music to charm his sitter and a 1517 visit to Leonardo’s chateau, when a cleric recorded that Leonardo showed three paintings, including “a certain Florentine woman” linked in records to Giuliano de’ Medici.

The writer points to a Chantilly “cartoon” dated 1514–16 that portrays a nude woman in the Mona Lisa pose and says the Louvre announced in 2017 there was strong evidence the drawing was at least partly by Leonardo, executed with the left hand. The argument is that artists who produced the Houghton painting or other copies may have worked from that cartoon or from a lost nude painting based on it, making it plausible that Leonardo, perhaps with pupils, created a nude version.

Further circumstantial evidence cited includes similarities with Raphael’s La Fornarina and references to lost erotic works by Leonardo and his notebooks.

Key Topics

Culture, Mona Lisa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Chantilly Cartoon, Houghton Hall, La Fornarina