Sorry, just to clarify. "The" Mona Lisa - or at least the picture presented as such - in the Louvre, in Paris, is not the actual picture but a later copy by a different artist?
There's nothing on Wikipedia suggesting that, based on a skim, it says:
>It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic itself, on permanent display at the Louvre, Paris since 1797.[10] //
The OP posts saying ~'why does _the_ Mona Lisa image say this' and then the responder doesn't explicitly correct them: the linked image is not _the_ one but one of the copies, a copy that's also in the Louvre collection.
Aside, Wikipedia says it's been "on permanent display" in the Louvre since Louis XIV; not quite right, perhaps they meant part of the permanent collection.
I'm interested that Wikipedia claims it had no special renown until pretty recently, yet there are several high quality copies. Is that consistent?
There's nothing on Wikipedia suggesting that, based on a skim, it says:
>It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic itself, on permanent display at the Louvre, Paris since 1797.[10] //
I'm guessing I've misunderstood??