Mona Lisa
The small Da Vinci portrait of a Florentine merchant's wife that became the most famous and most parodied painting in the world.
Origin
Leonardo da Vinci painted it between roughly 1503 and 1519, almost certainly of Lisa Gherardini, wife of a silk merchant. The painting is small (77 × 53 cm), unsigned, and was carried by Leonardo to France, where it ended up in the royal collection and eventually the Louvre. Its fame exploded after Vincenzo Peruggia stole it in 1911 — for two years the world's press ran 'where is the Mona Lisa?' headlines, and when it was recovered it had become the painting everyone knew. The famous smile is the result of Leonardo's sfumato technique: the corners of the mouth are deliberately blurred, so the expression seems to change as you look.
Modern usage
'A Mona Lisa smile' is the canonical phrase for any expression that is enigmatic, ambiguous, or unreadable. Used about anything from a poker face at a negotiation to a guarded reaction online. The painting itself is the universal stand-in for 'famous art' in every cartoon, parody, and museum joke.
In the wild
She gave me a Mona Lisa smile and said nothing.— common usage
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