Andy Warhol: Mona Lisa

In 1963, [Leonardo da Vinci](/artist/leonardo-da-vinci)’s The Mona Lisa was exhibited for the first time in New York, launching a media frenzy that caught the attention of [Andy Warhol](/artist/andy-warhol). Amused by the hype of the portrait, Warhol unveiled his own version of the art historical sensation, repeating her smiling face 30 times in *Thirty Are Better Than One* (1963). In the 1980s, Warhol returned to the greats of art history, obsessively creating his own Pop renditions of masterworks by the Renaissance painters [Sandro Botticelli](/artist/sandro-botticelli), [Piero Della Francesca](/artist/piero-della-francesca), [Lucas Cranach the Elder](/artist/lucas-cranach-the-elder), and [Paolo Uccello](/artist/paolo-uccello), as well as the Modern icons [Giorgio de Chirico](/artist/giorgio-de-chirico), [Henri Matisse](/artist/henri-matisse), [Edvard Munch](/artist/edvard-munch), and [Pablo Picasso](/artist/pablo-picasso). Through his reproductions of iconic works, Warhol showed that a famous artwork can be just as commoditized as a can of [Campbell’s soup](/artist-series/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans).