Leonardo da Vinci
Stories behind Works of Art
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La Gioconda (1503-06). Leonardo da Vinci
Why is Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) the most famous painting in the world?
Beyond its beauty and the fact that it was painted by Leonardo, this painting was not so famous as it is today. It became very famous as from 1911, when it was stolen from the Louvre.
It was not a band of specialists or a theft executed by a superior mind. The thief was a simple man, a carpenter who had worked in the museum, called Vincenzo Peruggia. He had installed the glass protecting the masterpiece. He had the uniform of the employees of the museum and knew how the painting was fixed to the frame.
One Monday, when the Louvre was closed to the public, he entered as any other employee. He took the Mona Lisa (that was painted on a poplar board) from the wall, removed the frame and hid the painting covering it with his uniform, and went out walking normally with it under his arm.
The following day, when the museum opened, the noticed the disappearance of the Da Vinci painting, and the museum was closed for a week.
The funny thing is that when it reopened, there was a record of ticket sales. Something unusual, people paid to see an empty place on the wall.
It was a media sensation. A lot of resources and hypothesis were applied in order to find the painting which in fact was very near the Louvre, on a little table, in the humble hotel room where Peruggia lived. He did not know what to do with the work.
It is said that the intellectual author, the one who encouraged Peruggia to steal, was a man called Valfierno, a scammer, who did not want the original of Da Vinci but the news of the theft to deceive millionaires with reproductions. The myth is that he made six copies and sold them.
Two years later, Peruggia read in the newspaper an ad of a Florentine antiques dealer who bought works of art at good price. He innocently offered the Mona Lisa to him, and he was caught.
The whole story is so crazy that people, instead of condemning Peruggia, ended up liking him. He was considered as a charming romantic. He went to prison for a couple of months only.
Due to the theft everybody talked about La Mona Lisa, and its image was reproduced a million times in newspapers, postcards and mass-consumption products and even at the movies.
La Mona Lisa was one of the most representative paintings of the Renaissance and became an icon of mass culture. It had the fame of a pop celebrity many years before the pop culture.
Recommended links:
Characteristic Elements of Renaissance Painting.
The Four Greatest Painters of the Italian Renaissance.
Artistic Movements from Classical Antiquity to Rococo.
The Stanze of Raphael and the High Renaissance.
Stories Behind Works of Art: The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli.
Piero della Francesca, the Master of Perspective.
Fra Angelico and the Early Renaissance.
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