he worked quietly away at the portrait of the young wife of a Florentine merchant. she was a beautiful and fashionable laday, with stylishly plucked eyebrows, named Madonna, Lisa del Giocondo. Leonardo painted her sitting serenely with folded hands, looking out at the view with the same slight smile that haunted so many of the faces he drew and painted. Behind ay mountains of winding, tortured rivers and setting off the that reflects the mystery of the smile while placid figure. Vasari described the portrait of Mona Lisa as "an e ordinary example of how grt imitate nature." He wrote: "The eyes possess the lustre, lamdl the nose the fine nostrils, rosy and tendar, seen in life