Timeless beauty encased in a frame, day after day stares back at thousands of admiring viewers, engaging with them through an intriguing, smiling expression and a profound gaze, an embodiment of perfection and artistic expression.
But enough about me.
The Portrait of Mona Lisa by Italian painter, engineer, polymath and all-encompassing genius Leonardo Da Vinci is exhibited at the Salle des Etats in the Louvre Museum, in Paris, France. Painted in oil on a poplar panel, the masterpiece is relatively small, measuring 77 by 53 cm. Despite the unimpressive size, an estimated 30,000 visitors crowd around the painting every single day – except Tuesday anyway, when the Louvre is closed.
Considering that a ticket to the Louvre costs €22, the Mona Lisa, the jewel of the Louvre, helps generate some €206 million in revenue to the museum every year – that’s $223 million, roughly one quarter of the painting’s estimated value.
And yet, for all its cultural importance and fame, the Mona Lisa wasn’t really famous at all up until about a century ago thanks to one of the most famous art capers in history, which also just so happened to see none other than a young burgeoning artist by the name of Pablo Picasso arrested for stealing it.
So, what is the secret of Mona Lisa’s success? Who was the woman in the painting, why is it called the Mona Lisa, how did it rise to prominence, what mysteries and controversies lurk behind those brush strokes, and what’s the Picasso connection in the caper that made it rise to arguably the most famous painting in the world?
Let’s start with the origin of the painting itself and who the Mona Lisa was.
It was in Florence, Italy that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa, between 1503 and 1506. The most agreed upon origin story for this work is that it was commissioned to the artist by the wealthy husband of the portrayed lady – more on this shortly.
Da Vinci was famously a perfectionist and procrastinator, and as such he continued to retouch his painting until 1513. As to why da Vinci never delivered it to the person who commissioned the painting, it has been speculated that he received a much more lucrative commission shortly thereafter and thus abandoned the painting at the time. Another hypothesis is that he perhaps made two versions of the painting, keeping one and delivering the other. More on this two Mona Lisa paintings thing later.
Whatever the case, it was still in Leonardo’s hands in 1517 when King Francis I of France invited him to live at the castle of Cloux, near Amboise, central France. This is where the Italian artist died of a stroke on May 2, 1519. Historical records of the time offer two versions, equally reliable, of what happened to his beloved masterpiece afterwards.
According to one version, Leonardo sold the Mona Lisa to King Francis, to the tune of 4,000 golden écus and it went on display at the castle of Cloux. Indeed, one Antonio de Beatis, secretary to a cardinal, reported seeing the Mona Lisa at Cloux on October 10, 1517. However, a 1525 notarial document mentions that the painting had been inherited by Gian Giacomo Caprotti, known as Salaí, Leonardo’s favourite apprentice, assistant and alleged lover.
This discrepancy in accounts points to the possible existence of potentially two contemporary versions of the Mona Lisa once again. Again, we’ll explore this conundrum later.
In any case, by the 17th Century the Mona Lisa we know and love today was in the hands of the French Crown. In 1630, King Louis XIII considered selling it to King Charles I of England, but Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens convinced him to sell another painting instead. In 1665 the Mona Lisa was first hung at the Louvre, back then the Royal Palace in Paris, but was soon moved to Versailles, for Louis XIV to admire it in his private gallery.
In the late 18th century, King Louis XV unceremoniously had the painting removed from its place of prominence at Versailles and placed out of the way in the keeper of the royal buildings’ office.
After the French revolution, the Louvre was converted into a museum, and in 1797 the Mona Lisa returned to its halls, widely ignored by the general public. In 1800, another kind of general, General Napoleon Bonaparte, took a fancy to the Tuscan lady, and had her relocated to the chambers of his wife Josephine. But not for long, as in 1805 the Mona Lisa was once again moved to the Louvre’s Salon Carré where it remained until August 21, 1911.
That said, it was during the 19th century that while the masses still weren’t overtly aware of the painting, art critics were starting to appreciate it, with particularly French art critics beginning to hold it up as a model of Renaissance painting techniques. This helped it attain a level of significant fame among art enthusiasts of the world, but to the wider general public, it was still little known. This would only change thanks to the Picasso caper we’ll get into shortly.
We will pick up the painting’s history in a later section. For the moment, let’s go back to why art enthusiasts first began appreciating the painting to the level they did in the late 19th century. In a word- technique.
In the painting, Da Vinci experimented with a method known by the Italian word sfumato, which can be translated as ‘nuanced’ or ‘shaded’. Rather than painting well-defined outlines to his subject, the artist applied several layers of different colours, tones and shades, waiting for each one to dry before laying on the next.
The sfumato technique allowed Leonardo to merge the human figure with the landscape behind her, which was a dramatic and varied landscape, rather unusual for portrait art at the time. It depicts rocks, roads, hills and a river, fading from earthly tones into a dreamy distance, rendered in ethereal shades of blue. However dream-like, this backdrop was likely inspired by the countryside of the Republic of Florence, Leonardo’s main place of work in the early 1500s.
Going back to the technique, this device is at the basis of the enigmatic gaze and fascinating smile of the Mona Lisa. On the eyes and their apparent ability to follow you around the room, it turns out this technique lends itself to this.
So how does this work? It turns out for even a moderately skilled artist, this “ubiquitous gaze” effect isn’t a difficult thing to achieve. In a nutshell, all you need is a little illusion of depth, so the person depicted appearing at least somewhat 3D despite being on a 2D canvas, and to direct the gaze of the eyes such that they would be looking at someone standing right in front of the picture.
So what exactly is going on here in our brains that then makes it seem like the eyes follow you even if you move away from being front and center? As demonstrated in 2004 by a team of researchers from Ohio State University, as you move to the side, the “near” and “far” points of the 2D image don’t really change. These near and far points are defined as visible points that, if the image was 3-dimensional, would appear nearest and furthest away from the viewer at a given angle. Summarising their findings, co-author of the paper James Todd had the following to say:
“The idea is simple – no matter what angle you look at a painting from, the painting itself doesn’t change. You’re looking at a flat surface…. The key is that the near points and far points of the picture remained the same no matter the angle the picture was viewed from. When observing real surfaces in the natural environment the visual information that specifies near and far points varies when we change viewing direction. When we observe a picture on the wall, on the other hand, the visual information that defines near and far points is unaffected by viewing direction. Still, we interpret this perceptually as if it were a real object…”
Thus, because the perspective, shadows, and light on the painting don’t change as you move around, if the eyes in the painting would be staring directly at the observer if said individual is standing in front of the painting, it creates something of a mild optical illusion in your brain such that the eyes will continue to seem to stare at you as you move to the side.
In contrast to the eyes following you trick, if the artist tweaks the painting a bit such that the eyes are looking off somewhere else instead of directly out at a potential observer, no matter where you stand, the eyes will never seem to be looking at you no matter where you are.
The technique first began popularly showing up in art around the 14th century when the artist and architect Fillipo Brunelleshi introduced the art world to the idea of “linear perspective”, linear perspective being painting with the idea of everything in the picture converging on a specific point on the horizon, creating the illusion of depth. This, combined with skilled use of light and shadow, allowed artists to create masterfully realistic paintings, including sometimes of people that stare at you creepily no matter where you stand, and totally aren’t Scooby Doo villains stalking you with the intent to murder you in your sleep.
Going back to the mouth of the Mona Lisa, moving past her eyes that gaze into your soul no matter where you are standing, the same ambiguity applies to the corners of her oral orifice, raising many questions about her smile, variously described as ‘vague’ and ‘enigmatic’. Curiously, every admirer appears to have a different opinion on the nature of the lady’s subtle grin, ranging from an expression of melancholy to serene mirth. Is there a deeper meaning behind that smile?
A 2017 study by the University of Freiburg, Germany, argued that no, we should not look for a hidden message. The researchers developed eight slight variations of the original picture, altering the corners of Lisa’s mouth. In four of the images, her smile was more open. In the other four, her expression indicated sadness. They then showed the eight variations, plus the original, to hundreds of volunteers, asking them to describe if the person in the pictures was happy or sad. When confronted with the original, unmodified Lisa, 97% of responders stated that she simply looked happy.
Back in the 16th Century, artist, architect and writer Giorgio Vasari. In his work Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, first published in 1550, had no doubts about it: the woman in the painting was indeed merry, as Leonardo himself went to great lengths to keep her so! Although many discount Vasari’s account here, where he states:
“He [Leonardo] continually employed musicians or singers and jesters who made her merry, in
order to chase away the melancholy that painting often seems to give to portraits. And in this [portrait] of Leonardo’s there was a smile so pleasing that, to one who sees it, it was a thing more divine than human, and it was considered a marvellous thing for being no different than life.”
Unfortunately for Vasari’s account, imaging of the painting shows that the sitter did not originally smile after the first brush strokes. Da Vinci later corrected his earlier work, applying more than forty layers of pigment and lacquer, a distinctive feature of his sfumato technique. It is not possible to discern if the artist had a change of heart, or gradually developed his anatomical studies before reaching the desired perfection for his subject’s smile.
As a brief aside, contemporary commentators, however, question whether Mona Lisa’s expression was at all voluntary with the subject of the painting perhaps suffering from hypothyroidism. In a September of 2018 report by the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, authored by Prof Mandeep R. Mehra, at Harvard Medical School, Prof Mehra and his colleague Hilary Campbell, University of California, Santa Barbara, performed a diagnosis based on signs such as Mona Lisa’s yellowish skin, her thinning hairline and eyebrows, and a slight goitre under the chin. Mehra and Campbell concluded that Lisa may have suffered from peripartum hypothyroidism, a common condition made worse by the Florentine diet of the time, poor in iodine.
Consequences of this condition include a psychomotor deficit and weakness in facial muscles, which may explain Mona Lisa’s barely perceivable smile. This medical diagnosis makes for an intriguing hypothesis, which prompted us to compare Mona Lisa’s expression with those of the other three women portrayed by Leonardo in his career. Of these, La Belle Ferronière and Ginevra Benci display a rather unfazed expression, bordering on stern. Only the Lady with the Hermine displays a hint of a smile. From this, it may simply be that Leonardo preferred his portrait subjects not to display too open emotions, as subtlety and ambiguity made for more interesting subjects.
Whatever the case there, all in all, Leonardo’s sfumato contributed unprecedented psychological depth to what could have been just another portrait of another wealthy patron.
Speaking of which … who was she?
The first indication as to her identity comes from the aforementioned artist, architect and writer Giorgio Vasari. Vasari identifies the subject of the painting as one Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a wealthy nobleman and merchant who commissioned the painting. That explains the title of the portrait, with ‘Monna’ – rendered as ‘Mona’ outside of Italy – being short for ‘Madonna’, or ‘My Lady’.
The ‘Lady Lisa’ is also known outside the English-speaking world by another title, ‘La Gioconda’, the feminine declination of Francesco’s surname.
Vasari’s account was compiled three decades after Leonardo’s death, and Lisa may have still been alive, although the date of her death is disputed. Therefore, most assume this claim to be accurate, though the lack of direct evidence has spurred a number of alternative hypotheses as to the identity of the portrait’s subject.
For example, she has been identified as the noblewoman Caterina Sforza, as the Duchess of Milan Isabel of Aragon, or as a lover of Giuliano de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’.
We find particularly amusing the theory put forward by Sigmund Freud. The father of psychoanalysis believed ‘Lisa’ to actually be Caterina, the mother of Leonardo da Vinci, who died when he was only five years old. According to Freud, Leonardo wanted to capture the faint memory of Caterina with the portrait of an idealised woman, whose enigmatic yet sweet smile expresses motherly affection. Although, given Freud’s propensity to attribute everything to one’s mothers and complete lack of evidence, let’s just say art historians aren’t exactly jumping on this hypothesis like they apparently want to jump on their mothers according to Freud.
But was she an idealised woman? Or perhaps a very material man? According to French researcher Sophie Herfort the portrait sitter was the artist known as Salaí, Leonardo’s favourite pupil and alleged lover. Herfort states the master had wished to depict his assistant in women’s clothing, but had later made his face more feminine to evade censorship. This may explain why Leonardo carried the painting with him to France, rather than handing it over to the Giocondos.
Needless to say, these alternative hypotheses carry little to no evidence.
That said, neither does the original claim by Vasari according to an argument made in the paper ‘Leonardo, Mona Lisa and La Gioconda. Reviewing the Evidence’ written in 2004 by Jack M. Greenstein, Professor and Chair of the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego. In it, Greenstein notes that ‘Nothing in the archives nor in Leonardo’s voluminous writings conclusively connects Leonardo with the Giocondo family.’
He also points out that all critics who commented on the painting in the 16th and 17th centuries ‘Did not think that the title ‘La Gioconda’ referred to the surname of the sitter.’
We should point out that the word ‘Gioconda’ in Italian may be translated as ‘playful’. Hence, Greenstein argues that the title of the portrait is not the sitter’s name, rather a descriptor of her merry demeanour. The author of the paper then posits that Vasari may have actually never met the Giocondos, nor even seen the portrait itself. Greenstein mentions an incident, recorded by Vasari himself, in which the Italian writer admired two copies of Leonardo’s works exhibited in 1566. He described them as ‘A young St. John the Baptist, very well imitated’ And a portrait ‘In which is a woman who smiles.’
This unnamed painting is hypothesised to have been a copy of the Mona Lisa. You see, Leonardo only ever painted four confirmed female portraits. Of the four ladies he immortalised, only two are smiling: our friend Lisa, and the ‘Lady with an Ermine’. But the latter’s smile is barely perceptible. Besides, Vasari would have described it as a portrait ‘In which is a woman who holds some sort of slender white rat.’
So, if Vasari did not name the painting, Greenfield argues that he ‘Did not recognize La Gioconda by sight – a failure that would all but disqualify Lisa del Giocondo as the sitter, had Vasari ever met her.’
Looking into it further, Greenfield then reviews Leonardo’s finances. The Mona Lisa was painted some time between 1503 and 1506. Da Vinci’s bank statement for the period shows regular withdrawals of 50 gold florins, once every three months. But no deposits!
According to art historian Frank Zoellner, University of Leipzig, this lack of income proved that Leonardo was not busy in the spring of 1503, and therefore willing to accept a private commission from a wealthy but unremarkable family such as the Giocondos.
But Greenfield counters that the Tuscan polymath was far from idle, as he was involved in military engineering plans. At the time, the Republic of Florence was at war with Pisa, and Leonardo had been commissioned by none other than Niccoló Machiavelli to divert the course of the river Arno, thus ravaging the enemy’s economy. Moreover, in December of 1503, the Republic’s government awarded a regular stipend to the artist, as payment for a large mural, the Battle of Anghiari.
And if that wasn’t enough, Leonardo had plenty of wealthy patrons banging on his door – one of them being the King of France! Why would he have accepted a commission from a ‘relative nobody’ such as good old Francesco del Giocondo?
Greenstein concludes his paper by describing two alternative scenarios to Vasari’s version. The lady in the portrait may have been Lisa del Giocondo, née Gherardi. But she did not sit for a commissioned portrait, rather Leonardo painted her from memory as an idealised beauty.
But Greenstein’s preferred option is that the lady in the frame is not based on a real person: ‘La Gioconda was painted by Leonardo on his own initiative to show what art can do … Painted for display, not for a patron, La Gioconda is a showpiece of art. It represents a fictive smiling woman, who is so natural that she seems to have been taken from life.’
This would, of course, explain why Leonardo never delivered the painting to anyone.
Whatever the case there, we cannot but agree with his concluding statements: ‘Whether Leonardo employed a model or fashioned her from memory or imagination does not matter, since no knowledge of the model is needed to appreciate the painting.’
It is interesting to note that all this scholarly disquisition and any clicks to watch this video from our abnormally attractive and scholarly audience would be limited, if it weren’t for the event which arguably most contributed to Mona Lisa’s stellar fame amongst the general public: its headline-making theft in 1911. What is also most surprising in all of this and once again shows the universe is quirky is that Leonardo’s smiling lady only became a piece of loot by total chance according to the person who stole it.
The story of this theft begins on Tuesday, August 22, 1911. That morning, French artist Louis Béroud arrived at the Louvre with the intention of painting a copy of the Mona Lisa. The Louvre was happy to entertain artists in this way, so long as the copies of any work are not made the same size as the original.
Unfortunately for Béroud, when he entered the Salon Carré, there was an empty space where the Mona Lisa should have hung. Béroud queried a nearby security guard asking to know where the painting was. The guard assumed it must have been removed by the photography department, as they frequently did this without telling anyone.
Not satisfied with that explanation, Béroud demanded the guard find out where the painting was and when it would be put back. However, after extensive searching, the guard was unable to locate anyone who knew anything about what had happened to the painting. Soon after, the Louvre was closed while staff and French police combed over 1,000 rooms in the sprawling museum. But to no avail- the Mona Lisa was gone.
In the aftermath, law enforcement all over France scrambled to secure the borders in case the thief tried to leave the country with the painting, searching every piece of luggage heading out of the country. Ships that had sailed after the theft, but before search efforts were started, were subsequently searched when they reached their destination.
The authorities also interviewed and investigated every single employee at the Louvre. After all, the painting had been there on Sunday, but was not on Tuesday. The only people who should have had access to the building on Monday were employees working that day. And even if it wasn’t an employee, surely with so many people in the building, someone must have seen something. But this avenue of investigation also went nowhere.
The press had a field day. French newspapers began a bidding war to see who could offer the largest reward for information leading to the painting’s safe return, such as the Paris-Journal which offered 50,000 francs (about €198,000 Euros or $220,000 today).
When the museum finally reopened in early September, visitors surged in just to see the place where the Mona Lisa had hung. Budding author Franz Kafka himself would go visit the Louvre to look at the empty section of the wall, noting in his journal, “the excitement and the knots of people, as if the Mona Lisa had just been stolen.”
Yet, despite everything, there were no solid leads and the trail was completely cold.
That is, until police were tipped off on the whereabouts of some other items that had been stolen from the Louvre.
This brings us to Pablo Picasso.
When Picasso made his way to Paris in 1900, among many other artistically minded friends he made was poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire, in turn, had a secretary by the name of Géry Pieret. Knowing Picasso’s love of the 3rd and 4th century Iberian sculptures then on display at the Louvre, Pieret decided to simply go to the Louvre and take a couple of them. As it turns out, given the low density of security guards at the facility relative to its immense size, the theft apparently wasn’t difficult.
When Pieret presented the statues to Picasso, he loved them, with Apollinaire and Picasso ultimately paying Pieret 100 francs (about $440 today) for the stolen items. Picasso would actually go on to use the face of one of the statues in his famed 1907 masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.
Moving on to 1911, Pieret found himself broke and decided to go steal more things from the Louvre to, in turn, sell. When Apollinaire found out, he kicked him out of his apartment, funny enough, on the day the Mona Lisa was stolen.
With items stolen from the Louvre now being front page news, Apollinaire and Picasso had a bit of an issue that they’d not exactly kept their possession of the stolen statues a secret, with Apollinaire actually displaying one on his mantelpiece for some time, observed by countless guests, including some journalists. It was only a matter of time before the authorities came calling.
Things got worse when, perhaps just to get revenge or to earn money from the paper if he revealed the information, Pieret informed the Paris-Journal that he knew where a couple other stolen items from the Louvre rested.
Needless to say, at this point Apollinaire and Picasso were in a bit of a panic. As Picasso’s long time mistress Fernande Olivier notes,
“I can see them both: contrite children, stunned by fear and making plans to flee the country. They decided to get rid of the compromising objects immediately. Finally, they had made up their minds to go out that night and throw the suitcase containing the sculptures into the Seine—they left on foot about midnight, carrying the suitcases. They returned at two in the morning, absolutely dog-tired. They still had the suitcases, and its contents. They had wandered up and down, unable to deliver themselves of their parcel. They thought they were being followed. Their imaginations dreamed up a thousand possible occurrences, each more fantastic than the last.”
Unable to bring themselves to dispose of these particular pieces of history, instead Apollinaire decided to give them to the editor of the Paris-Journal, Andre Salmon. Despite a condition of giving them back being that editor was to keep a secret his knowledge of who had possessed them, when the police grilled Salmon, he spilled the beans.
Apollinaire was promptly arrested and became prime suspect #1 for the theft of the Mona Lisa. Not long after this, Picasso was implicated by Apollinaire and in turn brought in by the police, with his apartment thoroughly searched for the missing painting. As the two were being held, newspapers had a field day about the supposed gang of radical artists led by Picasso and Apollinaire who were running an international group of art thieves on the side.
On September 8th, the two men appeared before Judge Henri Drioux. Both would devolve into hysterics, telling the judge stories that conflicted with things they’d said even moments before. At one point Picasso became so desperate he pulled a Peter, randomly proclaiming to the judge that he didn’t even know Apollinaire, despite that it was well known they were close friends.
Of this statement, decades later Picasso would state in an interview, “When the judge asked me: ‘Do you know this gentleman?’…I answered: ‘I have never seen this man.’…I saw Guillaume’s expression change. The blood ebbed from his face. I am still ashamed.”
Both men at various points broke down and wept, begging the court’s forgiveness. Ultimately the judge had seen enough, and correctly surmised that the pair had had nothing to do with the theft of the Mona Lisa and knew nothing about who had stolen it. While they had technically knowingly purchased and kept stolen goods, he let them off and they were released 4 days later, on September 12th.
Over the following two years, Louvre officials gave up hope of the Mona Lisa’s return and after briefly hanging a replica of the painting, replaced it with Baldassare Castiglione by Raphael.
During this span, reports still occasionally filtered in that the painting had been sighted or was being offered for sale, but none of them panned out. It wasn’t until November of 1913 that the story picks up. It was then that art dealer Alfredo Geri of Florence, Italy received a letter from a man identifying himself as “Leonard”.
Leonard claimed to have the Mona Lisa in his possession and wanted to meet to hand it over. After an exchange of letters, Geri involved Giovanni Poggi of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. As to why, Poggi had detailed photographs of the real Mona Lisa which, most importantly, showed the crack lines from the paint drying over the centuries, as well as markings on the back that few knew about. With these photographs, they’d be able to easily tell if the painting Leonard had was the real thing, or simply yet another forgery among many that had popped up since the painting was stolen.
After a series of delays, Leonard agreed to meet the two men. However, before the scheduled meeting, he showed up at Geri’s gallery unexpectedly. While there, he reaffirmed he had the Mona Lisa and that he knew for a fact it was the real one. When asked how he could be so sure, he brashly revealed he’d taken it from the Louvre himself. When Geri then asked him if he’d done it alone, he states Leonard, to quote, “was not too clear on that point. He seemed to say yes, but didn’t quite do so,” and that his answer was “more ‘yes’ than ‘no.’”
They then negotiated a fee for Leonard to sell the painting for 500,000 lire (about €1.8 million or $2 million) to the Italian government- a bargain given newspapers at the time estimated the Mona Lisa to be worth approximately ten times that amount at this point.
Later, Geri and Poggi met Leonard at his hotel where he pulled out a white trunk. When he opened it, no Mona Lisa could be seen, which confirmed Geri’s suspicions that the whole thing was a hoax, as all the trunk appeared to contain was “wretched objects: broken shoes, a mangled hat, a pair of pliers, plastering tools, a smock, some paint brushes, and even a mandolin.”
But under a false bottom to the trunk, Leonard removed an object wrapped in red silk. Said Geri, “To our astonished eyes, the divine Mona Lisa appeared, intact and marvellously preserved.”
The men then convinced Leonard to come with them to the Uffizi Gallery so they could compare the painting to the photographs to confirm that it indeed was the missing masterpiece. When they did so, they found everything matched perfectly. They had the Mona Lisa.
The two experts then requested Leonard leave the painting at the gallery and return to his hotel while they worked on collecting his payment. Naturally, they instead notified the police, who arrested Leonard at his hotel almost immediately after he arrived back at his room. As for Geri, he received a tidy sum of 25,000 francs (about $110,000 today) as a reward from the Les Amis du Louvre and was given the Legion of Honor from the French government… Of course, he followed this up by suing the French government for 10% of the value of the painting, but the French courts ruled against him on that one.
So who was Leonard really and how did he manage to get a hold of the Mona Lisa?
Leonard turned out to be one Vincenzo Perugia. Italian by birth, in his 20s he decided to move to Paris with his brothers. When he wasn’t occasionally getting in trouble with the law, including at one point attempting to rob a prostitute which landed him in the slammer, he took odd jobs, including working construction.
He supposedly even helped construct the protective case around the Mona Lisa. This was done in 1910 after museum officials received a letter threatening the safety of the Mona Lisa. They then contracted with a firm called Cobier to come construct glass faced protective cases for certain of the more valuable paintings. Perugia, at the time, just so happened to work for Cobier, and as a result ended up working at the Louvre from October of 1910 to January of 1911, helping him become extremely familiar with its layout.
As for how he stole the painting, many of the details are still up in the air as Perugia’s account varied considerably on several points throughout the interrogation process and trial, and some parts of his story don’t make any sense at all. This was all considered curious because he’d already confessed to the crime both to Geri and the authorities after, so there was little point in lying about how he did it, unless he was perhaps protecting others who may have been involved.
Whatever the case, the generally accepted story is that Perugia slipped into a nearby storage closet on Sunday and spent the night there. After emerging from the closet on Monday dressed in a white smock to blend in with other workers, Perugia states he targeted the Mona Lisa because it “was the smallest painting and the easiest to transport.”
The 5 ft 3 inch (1.6 meter) Perugia then supposedly managed to lift the nearly 200 pound (91 kg) frame and painting off the wall, despite that it weighed significantly more than he did- one of many factors that have led some to speculate that he probably wasn’t actually working alone.
And if you’re now wondering why the painting wasn’t secured to the wall in any way, ease of removal was considered a good thing by museum officials in case of a fire.
In any event, once out in a nearby stairwell, Perugia claims he removed the painting from its casing, wrapped a white cloth around it and supposedly somehow slipped the 21×30 inch (53×76 cm) painting under his smock despite that this is about half his height and significantly wider than the man himself… Color us sceptical on that one.
If you’re wondering why he didn’t try rolling it up, this wasn’t possible as the Mona Lisa is not painted on a canvas, but on slabs of wood.
Walking down the stairs to the first floor, Perugia ran into a big problem- the door at the bottom was locked and the key he had somehow acquired for it didn’t work. Using the screwdriver he had on hand, he managed to get the door knob off, at which point he was discovered by a plumber by the name of Sauvet. Apparently not seeing anything suspicious about a missing door knob, nor the giant square bulge that was supposedly under Perugia’s smock at the time, if Perugia is to be believed, helpfully, Sauvet had some pliers on him that made the task of finishing the job of opening the door easier.
Perugia was then able to leave the museum altogether when the guard at the main entrance briefly left his post to get a bucket of water to use to clean the lobby. Once outside, Perugia tossed aside the doorknob, which was later found by police, and went home.
Smart enough not to leave Paris with the painting while the heat was on, Perugia waited 28 months to bring it back to Italy, ultimately making that trip with the painting stored in the hidden compartment in his trunk.
Despite strong suspicions that he must have had help, Perugia maintained that he worked alone and only wanted to return the Mona Lisa to her rightful home in Italy.
He seemed to be under the mistaken impression that the painting had been stolen and taken to France by Napoleon. In fact, as previously noted, da Vinci himself brought it with him to the French court a couple hundred years before Napoleon, with his assistant seemingly eventually selling it to King Francis I. After the revolution, the painting became the property of the new government.
While the general public in Italy seemed to eat up the patriotic angle to the story, with some proclaiming Perugia a hero, the presiding judge wasn’t buying it. For example, consider this exchange:
Judge: Is it true. that you tried to sell the Mona Lisa in England?
Perugia: Me? I offered to sell the Mona Lisa to the English? Who says so? It’s false!
Judge: It is you yourself who said so, during one of your examinations which I have right here in front of me.
Perugia: Duveen didn’t take me seriously. I protest against this lie that I would have wanted to sell the painting to London. I wanted to take it back to Italy, and to return it to Italy, and that is what I did.
Judge: Nevertheless, your unselfishness wasn’t total—you did expect some benefit from restoration.
Perugia: Ah benefit, benefit, certainly something better than what happened to me here…
In the end, Perugia was convicted, but given a relatively light sentence of just a year and fifteen days in prison. Upon appeal, his lawyers managed to get the sentence reduced to seven months.
Because he had already served more than that time since being arrested, he was immediately released and eventually returned to France where he would live out the rest of his life working, among other things, as a house painter until his death in 1925 at the age of 44.
As for the Mona Lisa, initially there was some debate among members of the Italian government as to whether they should return the painting to France or keep it, but they ultimately decided, to quote a statement issued:
“The Mona Lisa will be delivered to the French Ambassador with a solemnity worthy of Leonardo da Vinci and a spirit of happiness worthy of Mona Lisa’s smile. Although the masterpiece is dear to all Italians as one of the best productions of the genius of their race, we will willingly return it to its foster country … as a pledge of friendship and brotherhood between the two great Latin nations.”
In thanks, the French government allowed the Mona Lisa to be displayed at certain museums in Italy before taking it back.
In the aftermath, with the painting gracing the front pages of newspapers the world over in the hoopla after the initial theft, and then again when it was found, and yet again during the well publicized return to France, it had now come to be considered the world’s best known, and most valuable painting. The Louvre saw a reported 100,000 people come view the painting in the first two days after its return alone, and, as noted at the start of this piece, it’s been one of the biggest draws at the massive facility ever since. As art critic Robert Hughes would lament, “People came not to look at the painting, but to say that they’d seen it… The painting made the leap from artwork to icon of mass consumption.”
Of course, after the case was solved and the Mona Lisa returned to the Louvre, by now a global superstar, some didn’t want to admire her ambiguous smile and sfumato brushwork, but rather, destroy it. Yes, unfortunately, it is a common occurrence for pieces of famous art to become a target for vandals and demonstrators of all persuasions – and the Mona Lisa is no exception.
The first acts of vandalism took place in 1956, when our favourite Tuscan lady was attacked not once, but twice! While the painting was being exhibited in Montauban, southern France, a vandal tried to deface it with acid for unclear reasons. Miraculously, the Mona Lisa was unharmed and was returned to the Louvre.
On December 30 of the same year, a homeless Bolivian man hurled a rock at the masterpiece, damaging a small speck of paint on Lisa’s elbow. The perpetrator had no particular beef against Tuscan middle-class women, he allegedly simply wanted to be arrested so he could spend some nights in a warm bed in prison. Or, so it is claimed. Given there are easier ways to accomplish that than trying to destroy one of the world’s most famous paintings intentionally, which certainly could see you get a lot more than just a few days in prison, let’s just say color us sceptical that was the real motivation. As per the minor damage, it was easily restored, and from then on the painting would be protected by a bullet proof glass pane.
This see-through shield proved very handy in April 1974, when Mona Lisa was on tour in Japan, at the Tokyo National Museum. A paraplegic woman, incensed at the lack of accessible facilities for wheelchair users, spray-painted the masterpiece in protest. Of course, none of the bright red tint made it through the glass pane, and the painting was not damaged.
After three decades of calm, on August 2, 2009, another protester decided to target the work.
The culprit was a Russian woman, disgruntled with authorities who had refused to grant her French citizenship. The woman entered the Louvre carrying her concealed weapon: a ceramic mug. Shocking museum patrons, she angrily hurled it against the Mona Lisa. Predictably, the mug shattered against the bullet proof glass, causing only a minor annoyance to the cleaning crew as they swept the ceramic shards.
On May 29, 2022, the Mona Lisa suffered a potentially more dangerous attack. Museum visitors stepped aside from the painting, allowing for an elderly woman on a wheelchair to admire it from up close. Suddenly, the lady leapt to her feet, produced a cake frosted in white cream and smashed it against Lisa’s face. The lady then proceeded to pummel the frame and glass pane with her fists, before being seized by security. As she was led away, she screamed at the tourists, urging them to ‘Think of the Earth!’
Always good advice…
The ‘lady’ turned out to be a 36-year-old man in a wig and lipstick, and was later detained in a police psychiatric unit.
This takes us to January 27, 2024, the last act of vandalism at the time of writing this episode.
At around 10am, local time, two protesters entered the Salle des Etats, where the Mona Lisa is routinely exhibited, and then proceeded to cover the painting in pumpkin soup, before delivering their message: ‘What is more important? Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food? Your agricultural system is sick. Our farmers are dying at work!’
The two protesters were swiftly led away by security staff, and the Salle des Etats evacuated as the soup was being cleaned. Again, Mona Lisa suffered no damages.
The action was later claimed by a group called ‘Riposte Alimentaire’, or ‘Food Counterattack’
In a later statement posted on X, the group stated that their protest was intended to integrate ‘Food into the general social security system.’ And called for each citizen to receive a €150 food card each month.
It is yet to be seen if the pumpkin soup stunt will further the group’s goals. After the event, the response by French authorities was firm. Rachida Dati, France’s Minister for Culture, stated that no cause, however important, ‘Could justify the Mona Lisa being targeted.’ Adding that the Louvre would lodge a complaint against Food Counterattack.
These acts of vandalism only contributed to perpetuate Mona Lisa’s fame. But our favourite portrait made it to headlines also thanks to less violent controversies.
Back in 2012, a Swiss-based organisation called the ‘Mona Lisa Foundation’ proudly and loudly revealed to the world the existence of a second, yet unknown, version of the portrait, also by Leonardo. The Foundation claimed to be in possession of evidence confirming the authenticity, but curiously did not own the painting itself. According to the organisation’s general secretary, Joel Feldman, the picture was owned by an unnamed international consortium, but refused to reveal any more details.
In October 2019, the BBC interviewed archaeology Professor Jean-Pierre Isbouts, at Fielding Graduate University, California. The ‘Foundation’ had invited Isbouts to Switzerland to inspect their ‘Second Mona Lisa’ – and the professor was convinced: ‘I spent about two hours with that painting. But after five minutes I recognised that this had to be a Leonardo.’
The portrait in the Louvre and the one displayed by the Foundation do bear a striking resemblance, in fact. The composition and the subject of both works are very similar, and one could argue that the lady portrayed in the newly revealed painting is the same as the one hanging about in the Louvre – although the one residing in Switzerland appears to be somewhat younger.
Isbouts claimed that 16th century records suggest that Leonardo may have in fact painted two variations of the portrait, with the ‘Second Mona Lisa’ being an incomplete version. The existence of two Mona Lisas would explain the discrepancy we mentioned earlier, i.e. the differing accounts on who actually owned the portrait after Da Vinci’s death.
Furthermore, the professor explained how a scientific analysis proved that Leonardo’s hand had been at work on both pictures: ‘The histograms [digital graphs of the colours used] show that in terms of the ‘handwriting’ of the painting, how he applies the paint, [it] is exactly identical.’
The BBC counterbalanced Isbouts’ views by speaking to Martin Kemp, professor of art history at the University of Oxford, and one of the top experts of Leonardo worldwide.
Professor Kemp quoted the results of infrared examination carried out on both works of art. The analysis performed on the Louvre Mona Lisa tells a story of hesitation, corrections, and evolution. In other words: Leonardo gradually adjusted his work as he painted, layer after layer, painting over certain details until he reached the final, perfected result. On the other hand, the infrared scan of the Second Mona Lisa ‘is just tediously exact and is clearly the kind of drawing that’s made when you’re copying something rather than generating it.’
But who could have been the author of such a copy? That is not clear, as its origins are rather murky.
Apparently, the Second lady emerged in 1911, when British artist Hugh Blaker bought it from the Phelips’ family estate in Montacute House, Somerset, southern England. According to press agency Reuters, this Mona Lisa doppelganger had been brought to England by a young nobleman called James Marwood in the 1780s. After changing hands several times, it was bought by the Phelips family, who then sold it to Blaker after falling on hard times.
Upon Blaker’s death in 1936, the painting was acquired by art dealer Henry Franz Pulitzer, who kept it in his house in Isleworth, outer London. That’s why the picture in question is often referred to as ‘The Isleworth Mona Lisa’.
In 1964, Pulitzer was short on cash and allegedly sold a 25% share of the painting to the Gilbert family. Then, in 1974, the dealer stored the Isleworth Mona Lisa in a Swiss bank vault, where it remained even after his death in 1979. Eventually, in 2008, the lady in the vault was acquired by the consortium we mentioned earlier.
This consortium, by the way, remained unnamed only until late 2019. That’s when the Gilbert family sued the Mona Lisa Foundation, in a bid to claim back their 25% share of the Isleworth Mona Lisa. It was during the court proceedings that the Foundation was forced to reveal that the consortium was in fact a company called ‘Mona Lisa Inc.’, based in the Caribbean tax haven of Anguilla.
As of today, the ‘Lady of Isleworth’ is touring museums and exhibitions worldwide, while the Mona Lisa Foundation is still actively claiming it is an authentic Da Vinci. Thus far, there is no scholarly consensus amongst art historians, with the most realistic hypothesis being that the painting in the Louvre is the original by the master himself, while the Isleworth version is a copy produced by apprentices in his studio.
The case, however, is not definitively closed yet, and our dear smiling lady may surprise us again in the future.
Bonus Fact:
In 1964, a new avant-garde artist was introduced to the art scene in the Swedish city of Gōteborg. The fresh new artist was Pierre Brassau and his work received rave reviews from critics and art fans alike. One critic in particular, Rolf Anderberg, was so overwhelmed by Pierre’s talent that he wrote the following review about his work, which appeared in print the morning after the exhibition: “Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer.” The reviews were almost universally glowing. All but one, that is. One critic’s commentary on the new artist was short and to the point: “Only an ape could have done this.”The opinion was unpopular, despite that the pieces of art looked strikingly similar to “art” you commonly see stuck to refrigerators, produced by 2 year olds the world over.
It turns out, though, that the “ape” review more or less hit the nail on the head. Pierre Brassau was actually none other than a young West African chimpanzee named Peter who lived in the Borås djurpark zoo in Sweden. The mastermind behind the hoax was journalist Åke “Dacke” Axelsson. Axelsson worked for the Swedish tabloid Gotebors-Tidningen and came up with the idea of featuring the primate paintings in an exhibition in order to put the critics to the test- could they distinguish between the work of true, highly skilled avant-garde modern artists when compared to the work of a random chimpanzee? It turns out the answer is mostly no. Although it should be noted that we’re guessing the chimp couldn’t have painted a perfect black square. So that’s something I guess.
And if you’re wondering, once the hoax was revealed, the critic who had previously compared Pierre Brassau with a ballet dancer, Rolf Anderberg, doggedly stuck by his assessment and stated that Pierre’s work “was still the best painting in the exhibition”.
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