I believe there are a number of museums around the world that claim to have the true Mona Lisa, some that look nothing like the one in the Louvre.
I read this back in the 80s in a Time-Life book on da Vinci. 
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The background is the good bit.
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They’re both utterly boring paintings of mediocre quality that have been bizarrely hyped for no apparent reason?
Leo was a spectacularly talented dude whose intellectual accomplishments were centuries ahead of their time. Most other historical scientists show a clear connection to their immediate predecessors. Da Vinci, OTOH, reads like a mid-Enlightenment time traveller lost in the Renaissance.
Portraiture, however, was not his strongest suit.
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The Prado one is undoubtedly in better condition, and much more photorealistic, but there’s a reason that painting still exists post-camera. Try opening each one in a separate browser tab and just having a look, I find Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to be way more interesting than the Prado, and it isn’t that close.
I’m not sure exactly why but I think it has to do with the face and the background.
The eyes on Prado’s Mona Lisa look disinterested and kinda formal, almost bored, I just don’t feel a connection. Conversely, the expression on Da Vinci’s looks intimate but slightly uncomfortable. I’m engaged with the subject in Da Vinci’s version.
As to the background, I think the more detailed background in Prado’s is actually too detailed and distracts from the subject. Da Vinci’s background is more muted, so doesn’t distract, but when you do look at it the forms are much less district, which actually makes them more interesting.
With the Prado’s I can see it’s supposed to be a nice view, and that’s it, I see there’s a mountain, a bridge, etc, and move on. in Da Vinci’s I’m actually searching through the shadows to figure out exactly what I’m looking at, the shadows and indistinct forms make the landscape look far more mysterious and fantastic.
I think this is a great example of how subtle the difference is that makes a masterpiece. The Prado painting is fantastic, but I don’t think it could have achieved the fame of the original.
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Is that the one where da Vinci killed a guy just to watch him die? Or maybe that was a different Time-Life book series.
[Hoping at least one other person remembers that commercial…]
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Yes, well, of course, this is just the sort blinkered philistine pig ignorance I’ve come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome, spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker’s cuss about the struggling artist… You excrement! You lousy hypocritical whining toadies with your lousy colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding masonic handshakes! You wouldn’t let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards. Well I wouldn’t become a freemason now if you went down on your lousy, stinking, purulent knees and begged me.
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Bravo!
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In old prospector’s voice: “Bound in fine, tooled leather…”
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Here’s one. Not exactly as I remember it, but pretty close.
I think you conflated Bob Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” with Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.”
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consequences
Worse than the pyramids.
The old west, not much left anymore. A few crumbling buildings, dusty mementos, and legends, lots of legends. Though not all of them square with the facts…
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The distances between her nose, eyes and hairline are the same when I measured them, but the DaVinci version doesn’t have eyebrows anymore, which makes her hairline look higher than it is.
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Brad was doing pretty okay, 'til he got to the guitar solo. The song kinda fell apart from there. Sorry, Brad.
But you’re a good man and your missus is still a cutie.
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I prefer Leonardo’s hands
(high resolution copies that don’t deserve further reduction in size)
Prado: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Prado-dopo-restauro.jpg
Leonardo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Mona_Lisa.jpg
Leonardo used odd materials-- the Louvre’s copie has shrunk, possible because SOMEONE (not saying who, but you know who you are) DECIDED TO PAINT ON WOOD INSTEAD OF CANVAS!
