Not only is her smile strange, just about everything about her is strange.

Leonardo did not give this, or any other of his paintings, a title. He simply said it is of a Florentine lady.

Before we dive into the nitty gritty of what lies behind the painting, it never hurts to point out that the first people to see Mona Lisa outside Italy lived in Amboise in the beautiful Loire Valley.

Apart from those who live in the area, very few have ever heard of Dampierre-sur-Loire, yet this is where one of the most astonishing Queens of England ended her days.

I became familiar with Château Saumur, or at least its image, in college many, many years ago (1972) while training to be an art teacher.

He imagined vertical flight long before the necessary technology to make it work saw the light of day.

It is not too fanciful to say that the world owes a huge debt of gratitude to Francis I, King of France for Leonardo's Notebooks, or at least some of them.

Francesco Melzi was an Italian aristocrat. His family took the name from their home town, Melzo near Milan (Francesco has a street named after him).

John Evelyn visited Amboise in 1644.