What is the description of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci?

Leonardo da Vinci: What are the best spoofs, mashups, and bastardizations of the Mona Lisa?

• The image of the Mona Lisa has been used in everything from advertising to political satire. What are the best examples of the Mona Lisa having been altered and repurposed?

• Answer:

  Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp drew a moustache and a beard on a reproduction of La Joconde in 1919. He added the letters L.H.O.O.Q. below the image, which became the title of the work. The acronym is both an altered version of 'look' and a saucy comment when read outloud it French as it reads: Elle a chaud au cul (her bottom is hot). It has been interpretated as a comment on Freud's reading of Da Vinci oeuvre in Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood (in which Freud analyses Da Vinci work using psychoanalysis and referring to Da Vinci's homosexuality) ; but also as an evocation of the rumours about Mona Lisa actually being male. The work is kept at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but belongs to the French Communist Party. Duchamp had given it to the poet Aragon who gave it afterwards to the PCF.