Leonardo da Vinci: The Mona Lisa Was Stolen for 28 Months, the Sfumato Is Under 1 Micrometre, and He Only Finished 20 Paintings

Last updated: May 2026 · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) is the most specifically “universal genius” in the historical record: a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, mathematician, anatomist, botanist, musician, cartographer, geologist, and inventor whose surviving notebooks contain approximately 7,200 pages of observations, drawings, designs, and speculations that established him as one of the most productive intellectual minds in any period. And yet he is simultaneously the least productive great painter in Western art history: he completed approximately 20 paintings in his lifetime — an output that Raphael exceeded in a single year, that Rubens exceeded in a month. The gap between Leonardo’s intellectual productivity (7,200 notebook pages) and his painting productivity (20 finished canvases) is the most specific biographical paradox in the history of art. External references: Louvre — Mona Lisa; Metropolitan Museum of Art. DeckArts Berlin from ~$140.

Birth and Illegitimacy: Vinci, 1452

Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 in Anchiano, a hamlet near the town of Vinci in the Florentine territory of Tuscany. His father was Ser Piero da Vinci, a Florentine notary from a family with a five-generation notarial tradition — one of the most respectable professional identities in 15th-century Florence. His mother was Caterina di Meo Lippi, a peasant woman from the local area. They were not married; Leonardo was illegitimate.

Leonardo’s illegitimacy had two specific biographical consequences: (1) He was not legally entitled to inherit his father’s notarial practice or to enter the notarial guild — the specific professional identity that would have been his birthright as Ser Piero’s legitimate son. This exclusion from the family’s professional tradition is one of the biographical explanations for why Leonardo did not pursue the learned professions (law, medicine, theology) and instead entered an artisan’s workshop at a young age. (2) He was not included in his father’s household for most of his early childhood: his mother Caterina married another man within a year of Leonardo’s birth; his father Ser Piero also married in 1452 (a legitimate wife). Leonardo was raised in Vinci, initially with his mother and stepfather and later (from approximately 1457) with his paternal grandfather Antonio da Vinci and his uncle Francesco da Vinci, who never married and who treated Leonardo as his own son.

Ser Piero da Vinci eventually had eleven legitimate children by four successive wives; Leonardo was his firstborn but his only illegitimate child. The relationship between the illegitimate firstborn and the large legitimate family is one of the biographical contexts most discussed in Leonardo scholarship: his father’s professional status (notary to prominent Florentine families, eventually including the Medici) gave Leonardo access to the Florentine elite without the formal credentials that would have accompanied legitimate birth.

Verrocchio’s Workshop and the Angel Test

In approximately 1466, at approximately 14 years old, Leonardo was apprenticed to Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’ Cioni, universally known as Verrocchio (a nickname meaning “true eye”, given to him as a goldsmith). Verrocchio’s workshop on the Via Ghibellina in Florence was the most technically diverse and most commercially successful in the city: it produced paintings, sculptures, bronze casting, goldsmith work, and architectural ornament for the Medici family and for the major Florentine religious institutions. Leonardo’s training in the Verrocchio workshop covered all these disciplines: not only the preparation of paint and the grinding of pigments, but the casting of bronze, the carving of marble, the goldsmith’s precise metalwork, and the architectural ornament’s mathematical precision.

The biographical story that Vasari tells about Leonardo’s debut in Verrocchio’s workshop: Verrocchio was working on the Baptism of Christ (now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence) when he asked the young Leonardo to paint one of the angels in the background left of the composition. Leonardo’s angel was so superior to the rest of the painting that Verrocchio, according to Vasari, “never again touched colours, feeling ashamed that a boy had surpassed him.” The Baptism of Christ is in the Uffizi; technical analysis has confirmed that the left-hand angel is by a different hand from the rest of the painting, and that hand is consistent with what is known of Leonardo’s early technique. The specific quality of the left-hand angel — softer, more atmospherically modelled, with a specific quality of sfumato avant la lettre — is legible in the Uffizi’s version to a careful viewer.

Leonardo remained in the Verrocchio workshop until approximately 1477–1478, when he established his own studio in Florence. He remained in Florence until 1482, when he moved to Milan to serve Ludovico Sforza (“Ludovico il Moro”). See: Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

The 7,200 Notebook Pages: Mirror Writing and the Unfinished Programme

Leonardo’s surviving notebooks contain approximately 7,200 pages of writings and drawings, spread across approximately 65 surviving notebooks and loose sheets in collections including the Codex Atlanticus (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan), the Royal Collection (Windsor Castle), the Codex Leicester (private collection, purchased by Bill Gates for $30.8 million in 1994), the Codex Arundel (British Library), and numerous others. These 7,200 pages are the surviving fraction of a much larger corpus: Leonardo’s companion and pupil Francesco Melzi, who inherited all the notebooks at Leonardo’s death, had custody of approximately 50 bound volumes and many additional loose sheets. Subsequent dispersal and loss have reduced the surviving record to the current 7,200 pages.

The most immediately recognisable feature of Leonardo’s notebook writing: he wrote in mirror script — from right to left, with each letter reversed, readable only by holding the text up to a mirror. The specific biographical reasons for the mirror writing are debated: (1) Leonardo was left-handed (documented), and mirror writing from right to left is the natural direction of movement for a left-handed writer; (2) He may have used mirror writing to make his notes difficult to read by casual observers (a privacy function); (3) He may have developed the habit as a child and maintained it throughout his career without deliberate intent. None of these explanations is fully conclusive; all three may have contributed.

The notebooks’ specific intellectual content: geology (observations of rock strata that prefigure 18th-century stratigraphy), hydraulics (studies of water flow, turbulence, and the specific patterns of water around obstacles that anticipate fluid dynamics), anatomy (systematic dissection and drawing of human and animal bodies; his anatomical drawings are the most accurate and most observationally specific of any artist in the Renaissance), botany (studies of plant growth and leaf patterns), optics (investigations of light, shadow, and the specific quality of atmospheric perspective), aeronautics (designs for flying machines based on bird anatomy), military engineering (designs for weapons, fortifications, and siege engines), and music (notes on musical theory and instrument design). The notebooks establish Leonardo as the most broadly scientifically productive artist in Western history. And yet the vast majority of the programmes in the notebooks were never completed, never published, and never communicated to contemporaries in any form that could be used. They were private documents of observation and speculation, not public scientific contributions.

Sfumato: The Technique Under 1 Micrometre

Leonardo invented the sfumato technique: a method of painting in which the boundaries between light and shadow, and between adjacent colour areas, are made imperceptibly gradual by applying multiple extremely thin paint glazes that blend the transition in stages too small for the eye to resolve as distinct steps. The word sfumato derives from the Italian fumo (smoke): the transitions are as gradual as the boundary between smoke and air.

The technical specification of Leonardo’s sfumato glazes: in 2010, the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF) conducted an X-ray fluorescence mapping study of the Mona Lisa’s paint layers. The study, led by Philippe Walter, identified that the sfumato glazes in the Mona Lisa’s face are applied in 30–40 distinct layers, each less than 1 micrometre thick (1 micrometre = 0.001 mm). The total thickness of the sfumato glaze complex in the facial transitions is therefore approximately 30–40 micrometres — comparable to the thickness of a single human hair. The individual layers are too thin to be resolved by the naked eye or by standard optical microscopy; they required X-ray fluorescence mapping to be individually detected and counted.

The practical consequence of this technique: in Leonardo’s sfumato, there are no perceptible brushstrokes in the facial transitions. The specific quality that makes the Mona Lisa’s face “alive” to almost every viewer — the specific impression that the expression changes depending on the viewing angle, the lighting conditions, and the viewer’s own emotional state — is a direct consequence of the sfumato’s absence of hard edges. Human visual perception’s edge-detection system cannot resolve the Mona Lisa’s transitions as hard boundaries; instead, it constructs the face’s specific expression from continuous tonal information that is slightly different from every viewing angle and in every lighting condition. See: Louvre — Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa: Stolen 1911, 28 Months Missing, Subject Identified 2005

The Mona Lisa (La Gioconda, c.1503–1519, oil on poplar panel, 77 × 53 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris) is the most famous painting in the world and one of the most specifically biographical classical art objects in existence: it was painted over an unusually long period (approximately 1503–1519, with the evidence suggesting multiple working periods across 16 years); its subject was unidentified for approximately 502 years; it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and was missing for 28 months; and its specific technical qualities (the sfumato glazes under 1 micrometre; the eyebrows removed in a 17th-century cleaning) have been revealed by technical analysis in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The theft of 1911: On 21 August 1911, a Monday, the Louvre was closed to the public. Vincenzo Peruggia, a former Louvre glazier who had worked on the installation of the protective glass cases over the museum’s paintings, entered the Louvre with two accomplices through a service door. During the closed museum’s quiet Monday morning, he removed the Mona Lisa from the wall (the painting was in a single protective glass case screwed to the wall; Peruggia removed the screws and took the panel), hid overnight in a broom cupboard or service area within the Louvre, and walked out with the painting hidden under his coat on Monday morning when the museum remained empty of visitors. He returned by train to Paris, where he hid the painting in the false bottom of a wooden chest in his apartment on the Rue de l’Hôpital-Saint-Louis for 28 months.

The discovery: on 10 November 1913, Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, received a letter from a person identifying himself as “Leonard” offering to return the Mona Lisa to Italy. Poggi and an art dealer named Alfredo Geri met with the person, who turned out to be Vincenzo Peruggia. He showed them the Mona Lisa from the false-bottom chest; they confirmed its authenticity; they contacted the police; Peruggia was arrested. The painting was returned to France via a tour of Italian museums (the Uffizi, the Borghese Gallery, and others). Peruggia’s trial: sentenced to 1 year and 15 days in prison, reduced on appeal to 7 months and 9 days. He had been motivated, he claimed, by Italian nationalism — he believed the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Italy by Napoleon (incorrect; it had been in France since Leonardo brought it there himself in 1516).

The subject identified 2005: For approximately 502 years after the painting’s commission (c.1503), the subject was identified only as “Lisa” by Vasari (writing in 1550, approximately 31 years after Leonardo’s death). In 2005, the Heidelberg University Library archivist Armin Schlechter was cataloguing a volume of the Heidelberg library’s collection when he found a marginal note written by the Florentine chancellor Agostino Vespucci in the margin of a 1477 edition of Cicero’s Epistles, dating the note to October 1503. The marginal note described Leonardo as working on three paintings at that time, one of which was a portrait of “Lisa del Giocondo” — identifying the Mona Lisa’s subject as Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, who had commissioned the portrait to celebrate the birth of their second son and the family’s move to a new house. Lisa Gherardini was born on 15 June 1479 and died around 1542. She was approximately 23–24 years old when Leonardo began her portrait.

The missing eyebrows (confirmed 2004): The Mona Lisa has no visible eyebrows. For centuries, the absence was attributed to Leonardo’s compositional choice. In 2004, Pascal Cotte, a French engineer, photographed the Mona Lisa with an ultra-high-resolution 240-megapixel multispectral scanning camera. The resulting images revealed, at resolutions not previously available, traces of a painted eyebrow above the left eye: a single isolated brushstroke. The eyebrows were present in Leonardo’s original painting and were removed by a 17th-century cleaning — the cleaning process that was standard at the time involved using solvents that, applied to a thin sfumato glaze, would dissolve the uppermost layers. The eyebrows’ thin sfumato glazes were removed by the cleaning that left the more opaque underlying paint intact. View Mona Lisa at DeckArts →

The Vitruvian Man: The 1,500-Year-Old Problem in a Private Notebook

The Vitruvian Man (c.1490, pen and ink on paper, 34.4 × 24.5 cm, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice) is Leonardo’s drawing of a male figure in two superimposed positions — arms and legs outstretched — simultaneously inscribed within a circle and a square. The drawing illustrates the specific mathematical proposition advanced by the Roman architect Vitruvius in his De architectura (written c.25 BCE): that the human body’s proportions can be inscribed within a circle (centred on the navel) and a square (centred on the genitals) simultaneously.

The specific biographical programme of the Vitruvian Man: Vitruvius’s text describes the proportion but does not provide a diagram. For approximately 1,500 years after Vitruvius wrote De architectura, no one had successfully constructed a geometrically accurate solution to the specific mathematical problem: how can the circle and the square be positioned relative to each other such that a single human figure (with fixed anatomical proportions) can simultaneously inscribe both? Multiple Renaissance artists (including Leonardo’s contemporaries Francesco di Giorgio Martini and Giacomo Andrea da Ferrara) attempted solutions; none produced the specific geometrically accurate solution that Leonardo achieved.

Leonardo’s solution: he identified that the centre of the circle and the centre of the square are not the same point (contrary to several previous attempts). The circle’s centre is the navel; the square’s centre is the genitals. By positioning the two geometric shapes at different centres that correspond to specific anatomical landmarks, Leonardo achieved the simultaneous inscription that Vitruvius described. The specific proportional relationships in Leonardo’s solution correspond to the actual average human body’s proportions — not to idealised or stylised proportions but to observed human anatomy. Leonardo had the advantage over his predecessors of direct anatomical study (his dissections from approximately 1489 onward had given him specific knowledge of the body’s proportional relationships that no purely theoretical approach could match). See: View Vitruvian Man at DeckArts →

The Vitruvian Man is kept in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. It is considered too fragile for regular public display — it is only occasionally exhibited, for short periods, in controlled light conditions. Most people who have seen the Vitruvian Man have seen a reproduction, not the original. DeckArts Vitruvian Man single (~$140): the first major public display of this composition in a domestic context for most people who hang it.

Only 20 Surviving Paintings: The Least Productive Great Artist

Leonardo is conventionally credited with approximately 20 surviving paintings — the precise number depends on attribution decisions that are contested for several works. The securely attributed list includes: the Annunciation (Uffizi, Florence); the Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi, Florence, unfinished); the Virgin of the Rocks (two versions: Louvre, Paris; National Gallery, London); the Lady with an Ermine (Czartoryski Museum, Krakow); La Belle Ferronnière (Louvre); The Musician (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan); the Mona Lisa (Louvre); the Last Supper (Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan — mural, not panel); Saint John the Baptist (Louvre); and several others with varying degrees of attribution confidence.

The specific biographical paradox: Leonardo left approximately 7,200 notebook pages of observations, designs, and speculations. He had approximately 43 years of active professional life (from his early paintings in the Verrocchio workshop c.1472 to his death in 1519). His 20 paintings represent approximately 0.5 paintings per year of active professional life. By comparison: Raphael produced approximately 300 paintings in approximately 20 active years = approximately 15 per year. Rubens produced approximately 1,500 paintings in approximately 40 active years = approximately 37.5 per year. The gap between Leonardo’s intellectual productivity (7,200 pages) and his painting productivity (20 finished works) is the most specific biographical paradox in the history of art.

The specific biographical explanations: (1) Leonardo was constitutionally averse to completion: multiple sources (Vasari, his contemporaries) describe him as a person who was perpetually more interested in beginning new intellectual programmes than in completing existing ones; (2) His extreme technical perfectionism (the sfumato glazes’ individual layers under 1 micrometre) meant that each painting required an extraordinary investment of time; (3) His simultaneous engagement with engineering, anatomy, mathematics, music, geology, and hydraulics dispersed his attention across too many disciplines for any one to be completed at his usual standard; (4) Many of his paintings were left unfinished at his death (the Adoration of the Magi, 1482, is the most famous example: the underdrawing is complete, but only traces of paint were applied).

Plato in the School of Athens: Raphael’s Portrait of Leonardo

In Raphael’s School of Athens (1509–1511, Stanza della Segnatura, Musei Vaticani), the central figure of Plato — standing at the composition’s exact centre, holding the Timaeus, pointing upward with his right index finger toward the ideal forms — has the face of Leonardo da Vinci. The identification has been confirmed by comparison with the presumed self-portrait in Turin and with documented Leonardo portraits, and is universally accepted in Raphael scholarship.

Raphael’s specific choice: Leonardo, the painter and polymath whose intellectual programme was most specifically concerned with the relationship between visible form and invisible mathematical order (his anatomical studies, his geometry, his optics, his engineering — all engaged with the mathematical foundations of visible form), was the most appropriate face for the philosopher whose central claim was that visible forms are shadows of invisible mathematical ideals. Leonardo as Plato is not flattery; it is the most specific intellectual biographical equivalence available to Raphael in 1509. See: Raphael: School of Athens — 58 Philosophers.

Death in France: Amboise, 1519

In 1516, Leonardo accepted the invitation of King Francis I of France to become the “Premier peintre, architecte et ingénieur du roi” — First Painter, Architect, and Engineer of the King. He moved to Amboise in the Loire Valley, where the French court was then residing, and was installed in the Clos Lucé — a small manor house approximately 400 m from the Château d’Amboise, connected to the royal palace by an underground tunnel. He brought with him three paintings: the Mona Lisa, Saint John the Baptist, and the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. These were the paintings he valued most personally — or possibly the paintings he was still working on at 64 years old.

King Francis I provided Leonardo with a generous income, a comfortable residence, and what appears to have been a genuine personal friendship: Francis visited Leonardo frequently at the Clos Lucé; Vasari records the king’s description of Leonardo as “there had never been another man born into the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher.”

Leonardo died on 2 May 1519 at the Clos Lucé in Amboise, aged 67. Vasari’s account of the death: Francis I was present at Leonardo’s death and held Leonardo in his arms as he died. The specific biographical status of this account: it is almost certainly romanticised (the king’s court records show Francis was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 2 May 1519, approximately 200 km from Amboise). Whether or not the king was physically present, the relationship between the painter and the king in Leonardo’s last three years was by all accounts one of genuine mutual regard. Leonardo was buried in the Collegiate church of Saint-Florentin in Amboise; his remains were moved during the Wars of Religion and his exact burial location is not known. A commemorative cenotaph is now located in the Chapelle Saint-Hubert at the Château d’Amboise. His companion Francesco Melzi received all the notebooks; the Mona Lisa, Saint John the Baptist, and the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne passed to the French crown and eventually to the Louvre. See: Louvre — Mona Lisa.

Leonardo for Home Decor

Leonardo’s work in the DeckArts range — Mona Lisa single (~$140), Vitruvian Man single (~$140), and Last Supper triptych (~$310) — provides three completely different biographical programmes for three different domestic positions:

Mona Lisa single (~$140) on warm white: The most famous painting in the world; stolen 28 months; subject identified 2005 after 502 years; eyebrows removed in 17th-century cleaning; sfumato glazes under 1 micrometre (30–40 layers). Above the hallway console on warm white: the bilateral threshold figure above the domestic threshold. Above the living room reading chair: the most universally recognised classical art above the contemplative position. View Mona Lisa at DeckArts →

Vitruvian Man single (~$140) on warm white: The 1,500-year-old Vitruvian problem solved in a private notebook; only occasionally exhibited (too fragile for regular display); circle centred on the navel, square centred on the genitals, two different centres, the specific mathematical solution. Above the home office desk or above the architecture/design/science study position at 125–145 cm (seated eye level). View Vitruvian Man at DeckArts →

Last Supper triptych (~$310) on warm charcoal or forest green: The most famous dinner in Christian art above any dining or gathering space. The moment Jesus says “One of you will betray me”; 12 individual reactions; the hidden musical score in the bread (proposed by Giovanni Maria Pala, 2007). View Last Supper Triptych at DeckArts →

Four Complete Leonardo Programmes

Programme 1: The Hallway Threshold (~$140)
Warm white hallway wall + Mona Lisa single (~$140) at 135–155 cm above the hallway console + one minimal object on the console + directed 2700K wall sconce. The most universally recognised classical threshold figure above the domestic threshold. Stolen 28 months. Eyebrows removed. Subject identified after 502 years. Total art: ~$140.

Programme 2: The Design-Mathematics Study (~$280)
Warm white facing-desk wall + Vitruvian Man single (~$140) at 125–145 cm (seated eye level; the 1,500-year-old Vitruvian problem in a private notebook; circle and square at two different centres) + Mona Lisa single (~$140) on the adjacent hallway or secondary wall. Two Leonardo programmes: the anatomical-mathematical proportion above the working position + the most famous theft in art history above the threshold. Total art: ~$280. See: Best Wall Art for a Study Room 2026.

Programme 3: The Last Supper Dining Room (~$310)
Warm charcoal dining room walls + Last Supper triptych (~$310) at 155–165 cm primary dining wall + beeswax candle + directed 2700K warm LED spot. “One of you will betray me.” 12 reactions. Hidden musical score in the bread. The most famous dinner above every domestic dinner. Total art: ~$310. See: Dining Room Wall Art 2026.

Programme 4: The Complete Leonardo Renaissance Home (~$590)
Warm white throughout + Last Supper triptych (~$310) dining room + Vitruvian Man single (~$140) above the study desk + Mona Lisa single (~$140) hallway threshold. Three Leonardo biographical programmes: the theological gathering above the domestic gathering + the mathematical proportion above the working position + the stolen-28-months threshold figure at the arrival/departure point. Total art: ~$590.

FAQ

Who was Leonardo da Vinci and what is he famous for?

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519): illegitimate son of a Florentine notary; trained in Verrocchio’s workshop from c.1466; invented sfumato (glazes under 1 micrometre, 30–40 layers, confirmed by C2RMF 2010); painted the Mona Lisa (c.1503–1519; stolen 1911; missing 28 months; subject identified 2005 as Lisa Gherardini); drew the Vitruvian Man (c.1490; the 1,500-year-old Vitruvian problem; circle and square at two different anatomical centres; only occasionally exhibited, too fragile for regular display); produced only approximately 20 surviving paintings in his lifetime; left approximately 7,200 notebook pages of scientific observations; died in Amboise, France, 2 May 1519, aged 67; his face is Plato’s in Raphael’s School of Athens. At the Louvre — Mona Lisa. DeckArts Mona Lisa single from ~$140.

Who stole the Mona Lisa?

Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian-born glazier who had previously worked at the Louvre installing protective glass over paintings. On 21 August 1911 (a Monday, when the Louvre was closed), he entered the museum through a service door with two accomplices, removed the Mona Lisa from the wall, hid overnight in the museum, and walked out with the painting under his coat on Monday morning. He hid it for 28 months in the false bottom of a wooden chest in his apartment on the Rue de l’Hôpital-Saint-Louis in Paris. He was caught in Florence on 10 November 1913, when he contacted the Uffizi Gallery to sell the painting. Sentenced to 1 year 15 days; reduced on appeal to 7 months 9 days. His stated motivation: Italian nationalism (incorrectly believing Napoleon had stolen the painting; Leonardo had actually brought it to France himself in 1516). DeckArts Mona Lisa single from ~$140. Louvre — Mona Lisa.

Article Summary

Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) is the most comprehensively documented case of the gap between intellectual productivity and artistic output in Western art history. Eight specific biographical facts: (1) Born illegitimate in Vinci, 1452; father a Florentine notary; excluded from the notarial profession by illegitimacy; (2) Trained in Verrocchio’s workshop from c.1466; the left-hand angel in the Baptism of Christ (Uffizi) is the confirmed earliest attributed Leonardo; (3) Invented sfumato: 30–40 paint glazes each under 1 micrometre thick in the Mona Lisa’s facial transitions (C2RMF 2010 X-ray fluorescence mapping); (4) Mona Lisa stolen 21 August 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia (former Louvre glazier); hidden 28 months in a Paris apartment false-bottom chest; caught 10 November 1913 in Florence; sentenced 1 year 15 days (reduced to 7 months 9 days); (5) Mona Lisa’s subject identified 2005 by Armin Schlechter (Heidelberg University Library archivist) from a marginal note by Agostino Vespucci dated October 1503: Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo; (6) Mona Lisa’s eyebrows removed in a 17th-century cleaning (confirmed by Pascal Cotte’s 2004 240-megapixel multispectral scan); (7) Vitruvian Man (c.1490): solved the 1,500-year-old Vitruvian problem by positioning the circle’s centre at the navel and the square’s centre at the genitals — two different centres rather than one; (8) Approximately 20 surviving paintings in 43 active professional years = approximately 0.5 per year; Raphael produced approximately 15 per year. He died in France (Amboise) in 1519; his face is Plato’s in Raphael’s School of Athens. DeckArts: Mona Lisa single (~$140), Vitruvian Man single (~$140), Last Supper triptych (~$310). Ships from Berlin. 30-day return.

About the Author

Stanislav Arnautov is the founder of DeckArts and a creative director from Ukraine based in Berlin.

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