Here below is a chronology of
fictional and
semi-fictional stories (including films, episodes in TV series, as well as literary works) that revolve, either wholly or partially, around the famous Mona Lisa, a portrait of
Lisa del Giocondo painted by
Leonardo da Vinci during the
Renaissance in
Florence. The years listed on the left refer to the year of release of these works of fiction.
1974 - Mona Lisa, The Woman in the Portrait, a novel by
Sara Mayfield about Lisa Gherardini, the ruling houses of Renaissance Italy, and their intersections with Leonardo da Vinci.[3]
1975 - The Private Life of Mona Lisa, a novel by
Pierre La Mure about the lives of Lisa Gherardini and Leonardo da Vinci that converge in the painting of the portrait.
1979 - The episode "
City of Death", from the long running TV series Doctor Who, centres around a scheme of stealing the Mona Lisa from the
Louvre. The Mona Lisa featured again several times in subsequent Doctor Who stories that were released from year 2001 onwards.
1980s
1985 - The adaptation of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle's The Final Problem in the television series Sherlock Holmes by
Granada Television, also centres around a scheme involving the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. The scheme, however, is the creation of the screenwriters who dramatised the episode for TV, and is not in fact part of the original Conan Doyle story written in 1893.
2000s
2003 - The Da Vinci Code, a novel by
Dan Brown. The Mona Lisa is an integral part of the plot, and this is underlined by the fact that the Mona Lisa itself has been used to grace the cover of this best-selling novel.
^The episode was the 22nd filmed and broadcast, but was not given a repeat broadcast for the first season of the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV series. The episode was filmed over 91⁄2 days between December 31, 1964 and January 13, 1965 by
Laslo Benedek based on a
teleplay by staff writers William Welch and Al Gail. The Mona Lisa had been on loan to the United States between December 1962 to March 1963, and the painting had been transported by the ocean liner
SS France, forming the likely background for the teleplay.
^Anchors, William E. Jr.; Barr, Frederick; Holland, Lynne (2012). Seaview: A 50th Anniversary Tribute to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
Dunlap, Tennessee: Alpha Control Press. pp. 78−80.
ISBN978-1-880417-21-8.