Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa between 1503 and 1506
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The Mona Lisa is due to move to her new home within Paris' Louvre
art gallery on Wednesday - four years after refurbishment work began.
Leonardo da Vinci's 500-year-old masterpiece will be hung alone on a wall in the museum's Salle des Etats.
It will give the millions of people who come to see the Mona Lisa every year a better view of the painting.
The Salle des Etats has had a 4.8m euro (£3.29m) renovation to provide a suitable home for the masterpiece.
It will allow visitors more room to gaze in comfort on
the Mona Lisa, which will be hung alone on a false wall in an area
dedicated to 16th-century Italian paintings.
Bullet-proof
The painting, which measures just 53 by 76 centimeters
(21 by 30 inches), will again be hung behind non-reflective,
unbreakable glass to protect it from climatic changes, camera flashes
and wilful damage.
Before the renovation work, visitors had to crowd around
the painting which was hung in a smaller space on a wall with other
works of art.
The Mona Lisa now has its own wall in the Louvre
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The painting - which is the most recognised in the world
- is thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of an
obscure Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo.
Cecile Scaillerez, Louvre curator in charge of 16th
century Italian art, said: "The painting abolishes the distance between
the model and the viewer by getting rid of a foreground, which created
a barrier in pictures of the time.
"On the other hand, Lisa Gherardini isn't just looking
at us, which wasn't usual in the portraits of the 15th and early 16th
centuries in which people were often looking away far into the
distance, but she is also smiling."
Last year, curators announced a scientific study of the
Mona Lisa after the thin poplar wood panel around the painting began to
show signs of warping.
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