About the book: 1999 / "The Smile of Gioconda" is a book about painters. Under one cover are collected literary portraits of nine famous Western and five Russian artists, from Leonardo da Vinci to Konstantin Somov. Realists, impressionists, modernists and the great surrealist Salvador Dali... All of them are presented in the fullness and pulse of life, with their passions and sufferings, with love interests and the search for their place in art. The book opens with an intriguing study of the world's most popular painting, the portrait of the Mona Lisa. This is almost a detective story about how the painting was created, who is depicted in it, how attempts to unravel the mysterious smile of Gioconda have been going on for 500 years, how the painting was stolen, and much more that is interesting not only to art lovers, but also to the general reader.