The Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most celebrated yet mysterious figures in art history. Apart from being known for his inventions, he was a remarkably skilled painter who introduced the technique of sfumato. The sfumato technique features soft blending of painted contours. Read on to get familiar with the 8 most important works by Leonardo da Vinci.

1. Mona Lisa: Leonardo da Vinci’s Masterpiece

Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1503. Source: Louvre Museum

The most famous painting in the world is shrouded in mysteries and strange stories. However, its reputation as a cultural enigma is relatively new. For centuries, people have attempted to uncover the identity of the model, with some even believing that it was a self-portrait of Leonardo himself, depicted as a woman.

For centuries, the* Mona Lisa* provoked cultural disputes between France and Italy. Italian authorities and activists have insisted over the years that the greatest work of the greatest Italian artist should be kept in Italy, not in France. In 1911, Italian artist and former Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia entered the museum through the staff door and stole the painting, intending to return to Italy. Before Perugia was apprehended, the long lists of crime suspects included Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire. The scandalous theft and the subsequent debate surrounding it partially contributed to making the Mona Lisa such an enormously important work. The media hype and the discussion of the work’s significance turned it into the most valuable painting in the world. However, before the theft, most art historians agreed it was not even Leonardo da Vinci’s best work!

2. The Last Supper

The Last Supper, by Leonardo Da Vinci, 1495-1498. Source: Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Italy

*The Last Supper *is one of da Vinci’s most famous works, which was almost lost to time due to its creator’s tendency to experiment. Traditionally, such works on walls were painted using the fresco technique, with artists applying pigment directly to the wet plaster on the wall. Fresco painting usually dried quickly and required fast, skilled work. Da Vinci was a notoriously slow painter who took time to contemplate, deliberate, and alter the smallest of details. For that reason, he decided to substitute the fast-drying mixture of water and pigment with egg-based tempera paint, layered over the oil and lead base. The technical experiment made the work extremely fragile. Allegedly, it started to peel off even before being completed.

During its long lifetime, the painting suffered extensive damage. At some point in the 17th century, it was deemed unsavable, and thus the monks cut out a door to the kitchen right through it. Today, The Last Supper is restored and preserved in a climate-controlled room.

3. Portrait of an Unknown Woman

Portrait of an Unknown Woman (formerly known as La Belle Ferronnière), by Leonardo da Vinci, late 15th century. Source: Wikimedia Commons

For centuries, this painting by Leonardo was known as La Belle Ferronniere, with the name referring to the occupation of the woman’s father or husband as an ironmonger, *ferronnier *in French. The remarkable piece of jewelry the model was wearing on her forehead is now also known as a ferronniere, inspired by the painting. Art historians are still uncertain about the model’s identity, but they frequently agree that the woman’s name was Lucretia Crivelli, a mistress of the Duke of Milan.

For a while, the authorship of Leonardo da Vinci was disputed by many researchers, who noted the dissonance between the precise and detailed way the artist painted jewelry and the simple and almost weak depiction of face and body, atypical for Leonardo. However, the analysis has proven that the wooden board on which the portrait was painted came from the same tree as the boards for Lady with an Ermine, an undisputed masterpiece by Leonardo.

4. The Virgin and Child With Saint Anne

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1501-1519. Source: Wikimedia Commons

One of Leonardo’s most famous paintings is also a rare example of almost universally accepted authorship by the artist. The work gained extra prominence after Sigmund Freud’s attempt to interpret the life and art of Leonardo da Vinci through its symbolism. The interpretation had little in common with reality, according to da Vinci experts, yet added even more significance to the painting.

The composition presented a complex task of fitting three figures and a lamb, symbolizing the future self-sacrifice of Jesus, into a coherent, stable, and yet dynamic structure. Leonardo da Vinci positioned the Virgin Mary on her mother, Anne’s, lap, with her arms reaching out to baby Jesus, indicating the connection between the two mothers and their children. In general, the iconography of Anna depicted with her daughter and grandson was rather common in Italian and German painting, yet da Vinci added a deeply personal and familial twist to it. Virgin Mary is seen in an attempt to restrain Jesus and to pull him away from the lamb, as if trying to save him from his fate of suffering.

5. The Vitruvian Man

The Vitruvian Man, by Leonardo da Vinci. Source: Web Gallery of Art

The most famous drawing left by da Vinci in one of his notebooks was essentially an exercise in proportion based on the writings of the Ancient Roman architect Vitruvius. Some interpreted it as yet another self-portrait, but this theory is impossible to prove.

Da Vinci’s notebooks were disorganized, rearranged randomly by generations of owners who likely took the liberty of picking the most interesting fragments and discarding the rest. Although Leonardo’s writings and drawing collections are known by distinctive titles, such as the Codex Leicester or Codex Atlanticus, all these rubrications are conditional upon the eras and personal biases of their owners.

6. Lady With an Ermine

Lady with an Ermine, by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1490. Source: Google Arts & Culture

At da Vinci’s time, an ermine was considered a symbol of purity. It was widely believed that when facing danger, the animal would rather die than soil its pristine white fur. Da Vinci painted the ermine significantly larger than the actual animal due to the symbolic nature of the image and its significance in the composition. Lady with an Ermine inspired the written world of the English writer Philip Pullman. In his book series His Dark Materials, Pullman introduced the concept of daemons, animal companions that represented the visible part of the human soul.

Another meaning of an ermine could possibly relate to the model’s pregnancy. Ermines were seen as protectors of pregnant women. Historians know that at the time, Gallerani was pregnant with the child of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, and da Vinci’s patron. Over the years, the work lived through extensive restoration and occasional overpaintings, including one allegedly done by Eugène Delacroix.

7. Virgin of the Rocks

The Virgin of the Rocks, by Leonardo Da Vinci, 1483-86. Source: Wikipedia

The Virgin of the Rocks exists in two versions. The earliest of them dates back to the 1480s and is currently kept in the Louvre. The latest and most famous version belongs to the National Gallery in London and is widely believed to have been finished not by Leonardo, but by his studio assistants. Both paintings illustrate the scene of adoration of the infant Jesus by another child, John the Baptist.

In the 1950s, American science fiction writer Paul William Anderson published a short story in which an astronaut on the Moon discovers a landscape strikingly similar to that in da Vinci’s painting. Another discovery was the footprint of a man wearing hobnail boots, which led him to realize that da Vinci, the polymath and inventor, was actually the first person to walk on the Moon.

8. Ginevra de’Benci

Ginevra de’ Benci, by Leonardo da Vinci, 1488. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The portrait of a Florentine poet Ginevra de’Benci is one of the most famous paintings, attributed to the early stage of Leonardo’s career. Art historians believe it was one of his early experiments with oil painting, which was still a novelty at the time. The painting preserved the artist’s fingerprints in the areas where he attempted to blend the oil paint with his fingers.

Some experts noted the strange disproportion of the work and suggested that the lower part of it was cut off due to some damage from water or fire. In his treatises, Leonardo da Vinci emphasized the importance of painting portraits with hands, citing their unique expressive power. Likely, the missing bottom part contained the image of the poet’s upper body and arms.

9. Saint Jerome in the Wilderness

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, by Leonardo da Vinci, 1480-82. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Saint Jerome, who lived as a hermit in a desert while working on the Bible translation, is considered the patron saint of scholars and interpreters. Da Vinci left his marvelous image of the saint unfinished, thus allowing us to take a look deep inside his creative process. Leonardo was known for not only painting slowly, but also for abandoning unfinished works halfway, rarely being able to focus on one thing for too long.

10. Saint John the Baptist

Saint John the Baptist, by Leonardo da Vinci, 1513-16. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Saint John the Baptist is considered to be one of the latest, if not the last, paintings by da Vinci. Some art historians believe the painting contained at least some elements of self-portraiture. The work lacks the detailed background landscape, typical of da Vinci’s paintings, yet demonstrates an excellent use of sfumato, the technique of blending oil contours in a smoke-like manner, introduced by the famous polymath.

11. The Baptism of Christ

The Baptism of Christ, Verrocchio, 1475. Source: Wikipedia

The 1475 oil painting The Baptism of Christ was attributed to the famous Renaissance artist Andrea del Verrocchio and his workshop. Leonardo da Vinci was the most talented artist who studied under Verrocchio. After extensive analysis, researchers concluded that the angel in the left part of the panel was painted by young Leonardo da Vinci, and already showed the specific qualities of his painting style.

12. Salvator Mundi: Is It Really Leonardo da Vinci’s Work?

Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500. Source: Christie’s

In 2017, the supposed masterpiece by da Vinci was sold at Christie’s for a shocking $450 million. For a while, Salvator Mundi, or Savior of the World, depicting Jesus Christ in Renaissance-era attire, holding a glass sphere that symbolized the world, was believed to be a poorly executed copy of a lost Leonardo original. However, in the early 2000s, a restoration team hired by the work’s owner cleaned the layers of paint added over the centuries and revealed the original painted surface, which was supposedly painted by Leonardo. The sales record became a shock to the art world and set an unsettling precedent for the art market’s greed. After all the chaos and hype died off, most experts quietly agreed that the famous work is, in fact, a mid-quality leonardesque—a painting produced by either a student of da Vinci, or a later follower of his creative method.