Portrait of Lisa Gherardini by Leonardo da Vinci and the Tradition of Painted Female Image in Florence and Milan at the End of the 15th — Beginning of the 16th Century

The end of the 15th – beginning of the 16th century marked the formation of female portrait as an independent art genre. At the same time, the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the undoubtedly most famous painting, which is surrounded by legends and mysteries, was created by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). In the past decades, many papers have been written about this portrait; moreover, numerous works have studied the phenomenon of female renaissance images. However, comprehensive research, exploring female portraits with "Mona Lisa" together, has not been found in the historiography. In this paper, possibility of including the portrait of Lisa Gherardini in the Milanese and Florentine portrait tradition is considered by creating a classification of female renaissance portraits according to their functions. Consequently the result of this paper is the hypothesis that the Mona Lisa changed its function when moving from Florence to Milan, and Leonardo made changes to his work, in accordance with this modification. This hypothesis allows to explain the reason why Mona Lisa is rarely studied by researchers along with other female renaissance images.