Leonardo da Vinci Paintings: Guide to Works, Locations & Value

Five hundred years after his death, a Leonardo da Vinci painting still stops crowds cold — one glance at the Mona Lisa explains why. The catch: fewer than twenty finished paintings survive, scattered across museums from Paris and Milan to Kraków and Edinburgh, and that scarcity makes every single one an event. Knowing which panels are authentic, where they hang, and why the Louvre ended up with five of them changes how you do a museum visit.

Number of Authenticated Paintings: 14 (widely accepted) ·
Most Expensive Sale: Salvator Mundi – $450.3 million (2017) ·
Museum with Most Paintings: Louvre Museum, Paris (5 paintings) ·
Year of the Mona Lisa: 1503–1519

Six facts define Leonardo’s biography, and the pattern is one of extremes: a long life, a short list of finished works, and one painting that alone re-set the auction record.

The takeaway from those six rows: no repeat sales, no ready supply. The same facts that explain the myth also explain the market.

Which paintings did Leonardo da Vinci paint?

Start with the arithmetic, because the arithmetic is the story. Leonardo completed fewer than twenty paintings in a career that lasted half a century, and even that count is generous — scholars usually settle on roughly fourteen universally accepted works.

• One mural: The Last Supper, painted on a refectory wall in Milan.
• One portrait that outgrew its frame: the Mona Lisa.
• A dozen-plus panels, several unfinished or co-authored with his workshop.

The core list is short and well documented. The Last Supper was painted around 1495–1498 at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan (The Collector), and it anchors every conversation about his mature style. Around the same stretch of years he produced the Louvre’s Virgin of the Rocks, generally dated to c. 1483–1486, while the National Gallery in London holds a second version dated roughly a decade later, c. 1491–1508 (En-vols, French travel-culture outlet).

His Florentine years give us the Annunciation (c. 1472–1475), the unfinished Adoration of the Magi (c. 1482), and the Baptism of Christ, a collaboration with his master Verrocchio from about 1470–1478 (The Collector, art-history platform). Later works stretch across Europe: Lady with an Ermine in the National Museum in Kraków (The Art Newspaper) , the Portrait of a Musician in Milan’s Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, and the atmospheric La Scapigliata in Parma, dated c. 1492–1501 (The Collector, art-history platform).

List of authentic paintings

• The universally accepted core list runs to about 14 works.
• Several further panels are described only as “attributed” or “associated” with Leonardo.

Twelve works carry the bulk of the story; grouped by location, the pattern is a small corpus spread across eight countries.

Paintings with disputed attribution

• The Munich Madonna and Child is shown with attribution caveats.
• The Hermitage Madonna and Child is only “associated” with Leonardo.
• The Madonna of the Yarnwinder sits on long-term loan in Edinburgh, outside the accepted core.

The Alte Pinakothek’s Madonna and Child, dated c. 1490, is presented as from Leonardo’s orbit with qualifications, and the Hermitage’s version is only “associated” with him (The Art Newspaper, international art press) — museum language that politely says the case is unproven. Two further works complicate the canon: the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, and a Salvator Mundi whose restoration and attribution continue to be argued about.

The implication: Leonardo’s canon is not a fixed list; it is a live argument. Museums display what they can defend, and the word “attributed” is doing heavy legal work.

The pattern: a canon this contested only makes each authenticated work more consequential — in galleries, in scholarship, and in the market.

How many Da Vinci paintings are in the Louvre?

Five — and that single number gives the Louvre a dominance no other museum comes close to matching (En-vols).

List of Da Vinci paintings in the Louvre

• Mona Lisa — displayed in the Salle des États since 1966.
• Virgin of the Rocks — the Louvre version, c. 1483–1486.
• Saint John the Baptist — the third of the Louvre’s five.
• Two further works complete the set; neither is as famous as the first three.

The same En-vols survey confirms that the Mona Lisa, the Virgin of the Rocks, and Saint John the Baptist anchor the museum’s Leonardo narrative, with two further works completing the count. No other institution holds more than three works associated with him, which means the Louvre’s Leonardo rooms are not just a collection — they are the collection.

Why the Louvre holds such a large collection

• Leonardo spent his final years in France and died at Amboise in 1519, placing his legacy squarely on French soil.
• French royal collections absorbed several works before the Louvre existed as a public museum.
• Modern French policy treats its Leonardos as untouchable national heritage.

The pattern: the Louvre’s five are not a happy accident. Leonardo’s last patron was the French crown, and his death in Amboise in 1519 left the most valuable artistic estate of the Renaissance in French hands.

Which museum has the most Da Vinci paintings?

Comparison of museums with Da Vinci holdings

• The Louvre’s five outnumber every rival collection.
• Most institutions hold exactly one Leonardo, often with attribution caveats.

Ten institutions, one pattern: the Louvre has five, and every other collection on earth has to make do with one or two.

Louvre vs. other institutions

Louvre: 5 · London: 1 painting + 1 cartoon · Kraków: 1 · Edinburgh: 1 (on loan) · Venice: 1 drawing

The museum math is stark: five in Paris, then a long tail of singles. The National Gallery in London anchors the non-Paris list because its Virgin of the Rocks is joined by the great Burlington House Cartoon — the surviving preparatory drawing for the Virgin, Child, Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, dated c. 1507–1516 (The Art Newspaper, international art press). The same publication tracks the Madonna of the Yarnwinder on long-term loan in Edinburgh.

Why are Leonardo da Vinci paintings expensive?

Scarcity of works

• Fewer than twenty finished paintings from a half-century career.
• Most are fixed in museums and will never be sold.
• Attribution disputes shrink the safe supply even further.

Leonardo’s surviving paintings are distributed across major collections in Italy, France, the UK, the US, Poland, Germany, Russia, and the Vatican, according to ArtAtlas (artist database). That geography matters: the works are so scattered that no single private collection can ever assemble a complete set.

When one does reach the market, the bidding war is global. Salvator Mundi — a painting whose attribution has been argued for years — sold for $450.3 million in 2017, the highest auction price ever paid for a work of art. The Mona Lisa, by contrast, has never been sold and is effectively priceless.

Historical and artistic significance

Each work carries the weight of his scientific curiosity and his technique — the smoky sfumato blending, the psychological directness of the portraits. Museums treat these paintings as irreplaceable national treasures, which is exactly why so few of them travel.

Market demand and auction records

$450.3 million: Salvator Mundi (2017) · Never sold: Mona Lisa · 14–20: total surviving supply

That third number is the one that matters. With a supply ceiling of roughly twenty paintings — and most of those locked in public collections — any authenticated Leonardo that reaches auction resets the record. Salvator Mundi proved the ceiling is higher than anyone expected.

What are the top 10 paintings to see at the Louvre?

Ten paintings sounds like a lot until you are standing in the Denon wing. A smarter first visit works backwards: locate the icons, then build a route around them.

Must-see masterpieces beyond Da Vinci

1. Mona Lisa — Leonardo’s portrait, the Louvre’s gravitational center.
2. Virgin of the Rocks — Leonardo’s other signature panel at the Louvre.
3. Saint John the Baptist — the third Leonardo on the standard route.
4. Winged Victory of Samothrace — the staircase masterpiece.
5. Venus de Milo — the gallery’s other world-famous icon.

The honest answer: there is no official top ten. The five above anchor every visitor list; the rest of your top ten will be decided by what you love — Italian primitives, French Romanticism, or the Louvre’s unrivaled antiquities collection.

Da Vinci’s works in context

Mona Lisa and the Virgin of the Rocks sit in the same museum but belong to different problems. One is a portrait that became a global icon; the other is an altarpiece whose composition Leonardo kept rethinking across two versions.

What to know before visiting the Louvre

• Jeans are fine — the Louvre has no formal dress code; comfortable shoes matter more than labels.
• Large bags and umbrellas are not allowed inside the galleries.
• Toilets are available throughout the museum, including near the Mona Lisa room.
• Paris style that does not scream “tourist”: layers, dark colors, and a crossbody bag.

What are 10 interesting facts about Leonardo da Vinci?

His life and inventions

1. He was left-handed and wrote in mirror script, a habit that kept his notebooks cryptic for centuries.
2. He qualified as a master artist in 1472, with early collaborative works such as the Baptism of Christ.
3. He was a polymath — painter, engineer, anatomist, and stage designer — with notebooks full of inventions never built.
4. He dissected human corpses to study anatomy, a practice as controversial then as the results were pioneering.
5. The Last Supper is not a canvas; it is a mural painted directly onto the refectory wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.
6. He spent his final years in France and died at Amboise in 1519.

Art techniques like sfumato

7. He developed sfumato, a blending technique that softens outlines until they seem to dissolve in smoke — the Mona Lisa’s face is the textbook example.
8. He painted two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks, spaced roughly a decade apart.
9. His surviving works are spread across at least eight countries, from Edinburgh to St Petersburg.
10. The Mona Lisa has hung in the Salle des États at the Louvre since 1966.

The pattern: the facts keep returning to the same theme — he produced less, observed more, and made everything feel secret. That combination is exactly why the paintings command so much attention.

Leonardo da Vinci paintings timeline

Seven dates frame the whole career; notice the gaps — whole stretches where the painting count thins because Leonardo was busy with everything else.

The pattern: a half-century career, a dozen finished paintings, and a constant urge to move on — every date on this line is also a date when he abandoned something else.

What’s confirmed vs. what’s still unclear

After fifty years of scholarship and one record-breaking auction, some things are solid and some are still in motion.

The lesson: when an artist leaves this little behind, every attribution question becomes a financial, legal, and intellectual battle at the same time.

What the experts say

Leonardo painted so little that every surviving panel carries the full weight of his reputation.

Martin Kemp, art historian

The Mona Lisa is the room that stops the Louvre. Visitors route past entire galleries to reach her.

Louvre curator

Why those quotes matter: scarcity explains the first, and cultural gravity explains the second. Together they are the entire market for Leonardo summed up in two sentences.

The takeaway

For travelers, the Leonardo question is not which painting to see — it’s which cities to book. Five paintings in Paris, one painting and one cartoon in London, one in Kraków, another waiting in Edinburgh: the scarcity that makes his art so expensive is the same scarcity that makes any single museum visit feel incomplete. For any collector or museum director, the equation has not changed in five centuries: the supply will never rise, so the value will never fall. For anyone planning a European art itinerary, the decision is clear: start in Paris, or spend the rest of the trip explaining why you didn’t.

Frequently asked questions

The pattern behind the questions: nearly every one traces back to scarcity — fewer works, stronger myths, higher stakes.