Historian Daniel Arass debunks popular theories about the smile of the “Gioconda” and tells the true story of how Leonardo da Vinci painted this picture. Here is an excerpt from his book

In the spring of 2025, the book “History of Paintings” with stories by Daniel Arass about painting was published. Arass is a French historian who taught “classical art” — the period from the Renaissance to the 19th century. In the summer of 2003, Arass led the radio program “History of Paintings”, where he told about six centuries of the history of painting and their most striking representatives: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Jan …