Doomed to Fail - Ep 85 - Mona Lisa's Journey: From Workshop to World Icon

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

The Mona Lisa is widely considered to be the most famous painting in the world. However, it wasn't always this way. The painting was created by Leonardo da Vinci, who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. Interestingly, the painting was left unfinished by da Vinci. The Mona Lisa was just one of many beautiful paintings by da Vinci until it was stolen in 1911. This event thrust the painting into the international spotlight and turned it into a cultural icon. It's a fascinating story, and we invite you to join us in exploring it! https://www.everand.com/audiobook/530555533/Most-Notorious-Art-Thefts-of-the-20th-Century-The-The-History-and-Legacy-of-Recent-Attempts-to-Steal-Valuable-Artwork Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Okay, there we go. And we are back on Wednesday. Taylor, can you believe the Chiefs won by 40 points? Honestly, I was going to say that. I thought about that earlier. I forgot. But I was going to be like, oh, congratulations, should the Chiefs for winning. So, can you believe that Taylor Swift endorsed Biden on live TV?

Can you believe Travis Kelsey proposed? That was unbelievable. And she's pregnant and fighting. Yeah. So what a while. It was. It was really fun. So clearly, we do not record this on the days I've released.

So hopefully. That's true. I don't know, man. Maybe it is true. I'm pretty good about those things. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah.

So we are back and we cover Calhoun City on Monday. We're going to cover a new topic which show you're going to make me guess. And then we're going to see if I'm going to get it. Yeah. I'm going to have a little bit of an intro and then I'll talk about the thing I'm talking about. Okay. Can I get a guess for now? Yeah, I think so.

I think so. So I'm talking about art because I have a very expensive art history degree, but I also can't find. Mom, if you'll send you this, I can't find it. But the physical degree. I think that I need it, but like I can't find it. it. But I was looking up fun things that happened in Europe, like heists and thefts. So I thought maybe let's talk about like an art heist and like art theft in the past.

And I read a book about it, just like the famous art heists and I'll share it in our socials and such. But a lot of the things that I read about it are people being like, it's theft. It's not a heist and it's not fun. You know, and you're like, yeah, but like it's also kind of fun. it's definitely fun you know like it's something that like you know is in um you know obviously in our zeitgeist for so long like i mean obviously you've seen the have you seen the thomas crown affair i've not seen that one it's so good so my friend nicole that you know oh oh that was pierce broszen yeah oh my what was the woman's name um she's so pretty i don't remember

rene rene rene zelle no ned zell worker Renee bruceau yes i don't know why i'm screaming sorry No, she's very pretty. You can scream. But Nicole and I lived in Italy in Florence for a semester. We shared a room and we had the only TV in the apartment in our room. And so we would watch a lot of MTV Italia and like random things. And one day she was like, man, I just want to watch the Thomas Crown Affair. And then it was on TV, which was like, a little exciting for us. Fun.

My favorite heist movie is entrapment. Okay, fair. That's a good one. They're all good. Have you seen the Brick and Morty Heist episode? No. It's like a heist within a heist, it's really. really good. It's, like, great. He, like, hates heist and then, like, does a thing. And, like, so

a heist is fun. Also, so one of the first movies that, like, really talked about art theft was in Dr. No, in 1962, which was the first James Bond movie. In real life, the portrait of the Duke of Wellington had just been stolen in the UK. And it was stolen for, like, a couple years and they found it. I didn't look. That's how it we're talking about. But it was in Dr. No's layer in the movie. Like, he had been the one who stole it. Like, they just, like, put it in as, like, a which is fun. It wasn't the real one, but like that's a fun thing. It also happened in Red Notice. Do you watch Red Notice? It was on Netflix. It's like Ryan Reynolds being Ryan Reynolds, which you talked about in the past. In the Rock, right? Yeah, and the Rock. And they do that thing where the Rock is an FBI agent and he like finds Ryan Reynolds's like, well, I think that I heard that you stole this painting. And Ryan Reynolds is like, I didn't do it. It's behind him. You know, like, that's stupid, but that's really funny. the guy who actually had stolen the portrait

of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London he was just a dude who was pissed that his cable bill was going up so he just went in and took it and like how did he correlate the two

he was like I think that what I got from it was like in the UK at least at that point it was like a public service the television was so it was like you pay the government

for the television service is what I got I think so he wanted to like you know whatever um punish the government for that so it ended up that he was only charged was stealing the frame because he had like uh because that was something that like i think he damaged it but like the fact that he didn't plan to keep it forever meant that it wasn't a crime which is like a hilarious loop hole because like you can't just do that but oh i saw your car but like i meant to bring it back like no you didn't but um he got three months in jail for

stealing the frame which is kind of fun I heard that if you, back in the day, if you, if you broke out of jail, it was only a crime if you didn't ship back your jail clothing. That was specifically in the rules. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. So I'm not like how people want to be free and so you can't blame him for breaking out. Yeah.

It's hilarious. Yeah. So it was like a loophole that got him out. But, oh, it was also the Audrey Hepburn movie, How to Steal a Million is really good too. I don't know if I didn't see that, but it's great. So now it's a little bit more. It is, you know, it is hard to steal art out of a museum. Like there really is a lot of security, you know?

No, but like, I feel like it'd be hard. Especially not that we have like cameras and I assume lasers, you know, like that's what I assume is everywhere. But the first reported art theft, reported, you know, big one, was in 1472. That happened when a ship en route to Florence with a triptych, which means, like a painting that's in three pieces by Hans Melming called The Last Judgment and it was on a ship and it got taken over by Polish pirates and it got taken to the Polish city of Good Dance and I think it's still there today like it was taken there and they put it on display and it's been like a bunch of back and forth since then but that

was like the first one that was like recorded um so I'm going to talk about a different piece of art that has been in and out of a bunch of different places and is probably the most famous painting in the world. Can you think of a lady who is the most famous painting in the world who has also recently been souped upon? I was so hoping this was going to be about Nicholas Cage and the Declaration of Independence, but I guess it's not. I'm going to go with the Mona Lisa. Correct. I got something right. That's what I wrote. I wrote Correct. I know you'd get it. So we'll talk about the Mona Lisa. It's a miracle that we still have her, you know, because she's like 500 years old. And it's so cool to me as someone who is a art history major who does not work in art history at all. I never will. I still think it's so cool that you can stand in front of these paintings. Like you can stand in front of them and someone painted it. You know, it's like a real thing. There's prints, of course, when you see them in real life. life. It's just really cool.

There's places in Italy where I saw paintings that have never moved from where they were painted because they're on walls. They're painted onto the wall. But you've seen it reproduced so many times, but you could be in the room that it was made. Yeah, it's fun. You know, like the Sistine Chapel and the Last Supper. It's cool to see that.

Have you ever seen the Mona Lisa in person? I've never been to France, no. I think I've been to Paris, but I just went for like a day, so you didn't get to go. But it's very crowded and stressful. obviously. It's like a whole thing, but let me tell you a little about why. I did get to stand in front of my favorite painting in the National Gallery in London, the Arnolfini portrait by Jan Van Eyck is my favorite painting. And it wasn't crowded and I went back a few times to stare at it. And it's just like really

cool to be there with it. Wait, what's stressful? It's visiting the Lou. Visiting the Mona Lisa specifically. So basically they, I say this later, but I'll say it out. In 2019, very recently they changed it. So there's like a line and you go in in a small group and you have 30 seconds to look at it and then you have to leave because before then it was just a crowded room and you were like 20 feet from it, you know? Yeah. It's not very big. I'll talk about how big she is as well in second. Do you know who painted Leonardo da Vinci? Oh, the Mona Lisa. I just told you oh no. Did you know? I would have said DiCaprio but DaVinci works too. I wrote Jesus Christ, it's Leonardo da Vinci but I

I did know that when I was a kid I was obsessed with Leonardo da Vinci when I was a kid I wanted to be like I wanted to be like he was like the first person I was like oh I want to be like that guy because I was like he's so smart and he's so cool and he keeps like buying corpses and cutting them up and like drawing them and then he would like write his notes and like

the mirror upside down backwards yeah yeah he's just like he's a cool guy yeah exactly he's a cool guy and one of the things that call him is a polymath which is a person who like it's like a Renaissance man like someone who knows like, you know, all sorts of things and is really good at all sorts of things.

So, like, Elon Musk, like, thinks he's one. A good example is Benjamin Franklin, obviously. It's, like, a person who, like, you know, anchored in a lot of different things and was really smart. But when I Google, who are the modern polymaths? The first person that comes up is Natalie Portman. So good for her. Is it just being a genius? Yeah, like, smart, but, like, in different, but, like, really good at, like, different things, like, philosophy and history.

and art and whatever so you are never going to get over your feud with Elon Musk are you no because I'm a good person but we don't have to talk about it um so Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15 1452 near Vinci the city probably um he could have been born in Florence at a house his dad owned but we don't know his parents were not married his dad was a notary and his mom was like a peasant woman both of them within a year of of his birth would marry other people and his dad would have three more wives. Leonardo had 16 half siblings, 11 of them survived infancy. And, but he wasn't very close with them because he was a lot older than them.

His last sibling was born when he was 46. So, well, this is like, you know, his dad, like, you know, getting younger and younger wives as they die. You know, like you do. He was raised in his father's household. He had an informal education. So just like, you know, whatever you learn at home, he learned how to read, but it was like vernacular. so it wasn't like formal education but later he he ended up showing like obviously a lot of promise in the arts he said that he remembered being a baby and seeing a bird in his cradle but and people are like you don't

remember that that was a long ago but like i believe him if anyone's going to remember being a baby it's later of a g you know i mean i'll believe him just because the story has no significance yeah exactly So, he, at 14, the family moved to Florence, and he was, he was trained in painting, sculpture, metalworking, and he worked with an artist named Verochio. We have to say it, Rocio, right? You have to say it like that. Love it. And he, you know, quickly, he was better than him, you know, like everyone knew and could tell that this kid was like really, really fucking great at everything he did. one historian, Vizari, who's also a painter, but was a really important historian for this time.

A lot of this is from him. I also just love that he lived in Florence because I lived in Florence. I took the most ridiculous classes when I lived in Florence. One was the landscapes and gardens of Tuscany. And every Thursday, we just went to a different garden. And all my papers I got A-pluses on. It was just like very fun. And then I took one just called Leonardo Michelangelo Raphael.

And it was just, we would just go to museums. And we like went to Milan and looked at painting. And it was great. But it's fun that he was there where I also have been. This is obviously the time of the Renaissance. There's incredible artists and thinkers and painters. And he lived with Roku for a while, but he also had his own studio. So he also did the things that like you see in his like sketchbooks. You know, like he would draw like flying machines and, you know, imagine all these things that like weren't possible then. But he would draw them and he would draw people. He would dissect people to like draw their vocal cords after they were dead. I don't know where he got them. I don't know the details of that. That's like when I was a kid, that was like the part of it that like always scared me the most about, I was like,

I'll never be a super genius like Leonardo da Vinci because like even his like sketches were like crazy works of art. Oh my God, I know. Like his throw away material was like, I was like, okay, so wait. So I got like start drawing now bullshit that is like the best bullshit that anybody can ever draw just so I can work my way off to painting this. Like, you know, I was like, I mean, this feels insurmountable for my skill set.

It's like, you know, or Da Vinci sketched this person and you're like, holy crap. That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. You know, like, it's crazy. So he ended up moving to Milan, and he became a court artist and engineer to a band called Ludovokio Sforza, the Duke of Milan. And he did a lot of engineering things. So he designed, like, elaborate parties, which sounds really fun, war machines and flying. machines and he did a bunch of like naval stuff so he would be able to um like design new boats um new ways of you know armoring in milan it's where he painted the last supper which i know you've

seen you know what that looks like um it is in santa maria de la graziya which is a church it is on a wall like it doesn't move it's not painted anything it's painted onto the wall so one thing that michael angelo did like the sistine chapel in fresco which is where you paint wet plastic plaster. So you're putting the pigment into the plaster as it is drying and that makes it like really resilient and it makes it like last a long time and like hardens into the painting. It is so hard to do that. There was an in Italy also, Nicole and I took with my art history teacher, he did like an activity where he had us paint a fresco and we just had like a little piece of of things like a plaster and we had to like paint over it and it just like it dries so fast. It's so hard to do anything on it, but that's how Michelangelo did those things, those things, and a lot of the things that Italy are that. But Leonardo didn't like doing that. So instead, he did a layer of white lead, which I'm sure was great for everyone. Really good for, yeah. Yeah. And then he painted in Tempera paint, which is a pigment typically made of eggs. So it's like eggs mixed with the different colors of pigment that you get from, like, nature. And it lasts a really fucking long time. It's like a lot of paintings before oil paintings were painted using the egg tempera, tempera.

It's hard not to say egg tempora, and I know I'm saying that wrong. So wait, he didn't paint with oil paintings or oil? Not yet. Not yet. Not the last supper. So he did it in the temperate, egg tempera, two layers of glaze, and it is miraculously still there. In World War II, it was boarded up, and the church was totally bombed, but that one wall stayed up. That's crazy.

And it's been restored a few times, but he painted that in Milan while he was there. So Milan was part, it was like, it wasn't like Italy was all one country during the 1500s. So it was like, you know, different little kingdoms. And so he was living with like the Duke. And the Duke of Milan was overthrown by France. So he had to leave and let go to a different part of Italy. He went, like the Italian area. So he went to Venice.

And he was an architect and able designer. He also drew awesome maps, which is cool because, of course, he could draw great, great maps. So I can interject real quick and go backwards for a second. Have you seen the last supper in person? Yes. So, like, what is it? You walk into a church and it's just, like, standing there? Mm-hmm.

They, like, built other, like, walls around it, obviously. And then, like, you, it's, like, but it's, like, its own old wall in, like, new walls because the walls were all destroyed in during World War II. But then, and there's, like, a, you know, you can't get close to it. There's, like, a red velvet rope, but you can walk in and you see it. It's just there. Does it have, like, a thing on it? Like, the way the Mona Lisa has a thing on it that you can't.

don't think so it did well i mean i was there 20 years ago but it didn't then right now that's kind of crazy that you just like walk into a church and like see yeah something so old and famous and that you've seen so many times reproduced you know and then you like see it in person is it big yes it's like big on the wall that's a good question dimensions of the last supper hold on it is oh god 346 inches what the hell does that mean it is 28 feet yeah it's huge wow it's really big okay sorry I'm curious no no great question so he when he was in um in Italy he worked for the Pope for a while um he also did he would do fun things like glue horns to lizards and have them run around and like glue wings on lizards and have them like scare people um I heard the story in my class I took in Florence that he like figured out how to like blow up a lizard skin to make it like huge and then it would like explode like he did a lot of like normal experiments

he was like a gross necessarily cruel and shitty um so he was doing all of that he had um we don't know much about his personal life he had an assistant named jean jacomo poti der rano better known as sallai sallai um they lived together for 30 years so it speculated that they were you know lovers and not just roommates is it a man yes it's a man um the nickname salai is derived from the italian word saliano which means little devil or imp so i feel like if you're nicknaming someone oh you little devil like i don't know maybe you're dating it's cute what do i what do i know um so i don't and um i also read that he earlier in his life he had been charged with the crime of sodomy

but it was the roof, so he was not charged with it. So there are little things that suggest that he, you know, was in, like, a homosexual relationship, but, like, I'm not here at him, but that's just, like, something that, he never had a relationship with a woman that was, like, recorded or a man. He's like the most important, like, one of the most important figures in human history. Like, who gives a shit? Yeah, exactly. So in 1515, he moved to France to be with King Francis I, the first.

after France had some more overthrowing of parts of Italy. He died on the 2nd of May 1519 at the age of 67. He probably died of a stroke. He had a couple strokes leading up to that. So pretty long life. He died a new 167 in France. Wait, that's a long life. 67 in 1500s, yeah. Oh, okay, 1500. I was like, dude, that's like 28 years for me. yeah no i think it's pretty good um he there's a story that i've heard before that like he was never religious but when he died he asked god for forgiveness and i don't know if that's true or something that people wanted to say afterwards but um there's that as well he's buried in italy but he died had died in france so okay let's talk about the mona lisa herself um she and i'm going to talk about like why is she in france anyway i'm talking because i'll tell you why in a minute um her name

was probably Lisa Garradini. She was the wife of a wealthy merchant. She was about 24 when the painting was made. People also speculate that maybe she was like, he painted her, but he was actually painting Salai, the apprentice suit who live with him. But that's probably not true. People have been trying to figure out exactly who she was,

like forever. But it is 30 by 20 inches, so it's much smaller in the last supper. It's pretty small. It is oil. so it was an oil painting and oil was just becoming popular so oil painting is

instead of mixing the pigment with egg you mix it with linseed oil or like another oil and that gives you the ability to like layer the paint and so Leonardo's technique that he made popular was called S-F-U-M-A-T-O

which is like layers and that makes it look kind of like easy in the background you know cool things like that it's a half-length portrait she's sitting in front of a landscape and it right now is in the Louvre.

So she also probably like the paint also was like very delicate. So she probably had eyebrows and eyelashes but those have just been like erased by time and like cleaning and all of that. So I was thinking, I was wondering like why is she in France when it's like an Italian painter and an Italian woman? But it sounds like he just brought her there.

He had started to do the painting. He never finished it. He is like technically not finished. He never gave it to the. who commissioned it and he took it with him when he went to France to live with the to live in the court there so that's just kind of where it stayed and where it ended up um the she's been in the Louvre since 1797 um but not the entire time someone tell you some times when she was not there um guess who hung her in his bedroom no god this is for you to guess the rock

i don't know sure he could have it um Napoleon of course oh yeah of course Which means I was wrong when I said that the Musei Napoleon, the Napoleon Museum became the Louvre. It sounds like it was the Louvre. And then he had the name changed to the Museum Napoleon. And then they changed it back to the Louvre after he was gone. So he had just kind of like called it that and brought all of his stolen things in there. So for a little bit, she was hanging in his bedroom. During the Franco-Prussian war, she was moved to an arsenal outside of Paris just for safety's reasons.

But the big thing that happened to the Mona Lisa, which really, really made her famous is on August 21st, 1911, she was stolen from the Louvre. It really was like an international mystery. It was in every paper. There were reproductions of her everywhere. And this is the time when it became like that, that's why it became so famous because there's like a bunch of Leonardo da Vinci paintings you can see. But this one became famous because of all the reproductions and all the mystery upon the fact that she was stolen. was he was was was was he famous as in like was yeah we wouldn't know if napoleon took it then presumably he knew that this was like something that was like very valuable already yes it was valuable but it was

like it wasn't the Leonardo painting you know it was like all of his works are good but there wasn't like a this is the number one one until the Mona Lisa was stolen and then everybody was like oh my god I'm like really excited about it got it um and then and And so what, so they were like, you know, it was all over the news. People thought they were like, did J.P. Morgan do it and have it sent to America? People thought they questioned Picasso, thought that he might have done it. But it turned out that the Louvre was just being cleaned. So it was closed for a couple days.

And a painter named Louis Barrow was like, hey guys, you know, I think this is gone. Like he was like, I think I haven't seen the painting in here. And like people had thought it had been moved to be cleaned. But no one could find it. And so I took about, about 20. hours people to actually realize that it had been stolen like it wasn't anywhere else in the museum and it turns out that a man named vincenzo perugia had just taken it he worked there and he walked in in his work clothes at seven a m just lifted it off the wall put it in a cupboard and took her home at night and just like took it out um he was questioned but not suspicious so they just like didn't think that it was him and he had her for a few years he had him had it in his apartment in pay Paris in a closet and then in the drawer under his oven. Like, we're so lucky that it's not, didn't catch on fire or like be destroyed or melted.

You know, he had it in his kitchen for several years. Then he brought it to Italy in his car. He had a false bottom under his trunk, probably like, you know, where the spare tire is. He had her in there, took her to Italy, tried to sell her to some art guys. And they were like, yeah, no, this is, no, you can't. Like, also like, it's hard to get rid of stolen art once you've stolen art. because like everyone knows and so um they they turned him in um he said that it was because she belonged in italy and that's why he had stolen her but like it's probably was just about money he tried

to sell it and also he kept it in his closet for two years in paris you know it's not like but they but he's still kind of hailed as he was held as a hero in italy and he served six months in jail for that that really made it like the biggest that really made her very very popular um during world war two she was moved all the time and no we talked about this but like the Nazis were obviously like huge art thieves and they like wanted to have everything there's so much that they like there's lost forever that they like probably destroyed we've all seen monuments then you know all of that but they would move Mona Lisa constantly they put her in like private vaults in churches in people's homes sometimes like they only had a couple hours to get her out as the Nazis like came barreling into France they just like move it and move it and move it and luckily it survived the entire the entire war and was returned to the Louvre in September in 1945. Why is it in France?

Because that's where Leonardo was. He brought it there. Like, he rolled it up and brought it there to finish because he died in France. The last years of his life, he spent in France, and it was just one of the unfinished paintings,

and he brought it with him. In Italy, doesn't have any rights to it because, I mean, he's an Italian citizen. No. He brought it there, and he worked for the king of France

of his own free will, you know? I guess it makes sense. It belongs to France. Yeah. So another fun, thing about the Mona Lisa is she really inspires people to throw shit at her. So in 1956 she was she's moved she's traveled a little bit in different exhibitions and she went to a different part of France and someone

threw acid on her which damaged the bottom. Also in that same year someone through a rock and that damaged her a little bit. A dude in the 50s also thought he was in love with her and tried to steal her out of the frame. So he cut it with a razor blade and obviously didn't get it. So then she needed to be protected in glass. It's not, it's in bulletproof glass now, but it ended up being, you know, put in glass. In the 60s, she went to the U.S. and the Kennedy saw her in D.C. So in 1966, she was in D.C. and in New York for a little bit. She was almost ruined by a sprinkler in D.C., but they, but her glass protected her.

In 1974, she was in Tokyo and a woman sprayed red paint on her, but on the glass, the glass around it, but sprayed red paint on her because she was upset that the museum didn't have, um, disabled access. So she did that in protest. In 2009, a Russian woman was mad that she didn't have French citizenship. So she bought a teacup at the store in the Louvre and threw that at her and it like shattered it on the glass and everything was fine. In May 2022, a man disguised as a woman in a wheelchair threw cake on her to protest global warming. And then just a few weeks ago on January 28th, 2024, two people from a food retaliation group who are protesting the lack of like good food around France. like around the world through soup at her.

So people love doing that. That is so fucking stupid. I'm sure they'll continue to throw stuff at her. But that is, and then I said this earlier, but I want to say now, like they change the way you view it now because if you look up like visiting the Mona Lisa,

you'll see pictures of like a sea of cell phones trying to take a picture of the Mona Lisa. And I think I put like a selfie of my dad from like far away because I know he saw it. But like now it's a queue and you have 30 seconds to see it because like 80% of the people who visit the Louvre are there to see the Mona Lisa.

Like, that's what they want to see. I mean, those other, like, incredible things there. She is obviously insured. In 1962, she was insured for $100 million, which is the equivalent to about $1 billion today. So she has a $1 billion insurance policy, and her estimated price is $860 million. Not that they're ever going to sell it, but, like, that's the, you know, estimation. I can't wait for the day we find out, Jeff. Bezos could have checked for that?

Well, I don't know. Another thing you should see is Glass Onion because there's an incredible Mona Lisa storyline in Glass Onion if you haven't seen that yet. Is it about a billionaire? Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I won't spoil it, but it's very fun.

So yeah, that's the dish on the Mona Lisa. One of probably the most famous painting in the whole entire world who's became super famous because she was stolen and she was missing for like three to four years. and so you've been there you've seen it um i haven't i haven't no i went to paris for a day and i didn't see it i've seen other leonardo's like in florence and i saw the last supper in milan but i have not seen the mona lisa got it got it okay yeah yeah i'm curious if people have seen it's it's interesting like i i've seen the pictures of people in that giant room in doing that and i'm just like what are we doing as a species like who like like what

No, I know. I think when I went to the Sistine Chapel, it was just so crowded. And there were like all these French children yelling. And I was like, I hate this. You know, like, it was just like way too much. And it's hard. But it's hard to see those things today. You have to find something that you love. It's not that popular. Let's see. And the thing is, the thing is like if you, I mean, I mean, there's people like like you with actual degrees and stuff. Not that I know many things about. But like, there's so many people of the era that are incredibly. talented and created an incredibly you know intricate detail worked and they like don't have the kind of brand recognition that like a Da Vinci or Michelangelo or whoever else has but yeah and I think I mean there's others I know I there's got to be like a real good reason why you know but like I feel like in um dementia's case like he's how she says an interesting character you know you have this image and this like old man there's like long white hair and this long white beard like sketching helicopters in the 1500s, you know. But that's the thing to me, like, the thing about

that would draw me to it is that kind of stuff. It's like looking into his notebooks and seeing, like, wow, this guy's mind. It's like getting a... And I think that's why he's popular. Yeah. Yeah, getting a window into, like, his mind.

But like, the Mona Lisa itself, I'm like, this isn't that, like, okay, I understand it's a big deal. But, like, I spent part of your conversation here, looking at the last one, I was like, this is incredible. Like, this looks... awesome like you just walk into a church and see it that's so cool and so

i don't know i don't know maybe i'm just being a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian but i'm also like just i don't know like it doesn't seem like that big of a deal we know you hate art of ours that i wouldn't know i don't hate art like that's what i'm saying i'm saying like there's a lot of really great art that you can see that isn't this famous that is as amazing yeah yeah um and it's art is subjective and it always will be you know I mean, what do you think? You tell me, you have an art degree. You're the subject matter expert. What do you think of the Mona Lisa? I mean, I think it's beautiful. I think that like, I mean, I can't believe that someone can make that out of paint. I can do like two blobs of oil paint and like nothing. Like it's, it's incredible how layered and detailed it is. I'm also not going to stand my whole entire life trying to figure out my whole entire life. There's people who have like devoted their entire life to looking at the cliffs behind her in the painting and trying to figure out exactly what Leonardo was trying to do because he painted it like in a studio. you know right so and like I love you know like my in laws are hilarious and like they are

retired semi retired and so like there was a Vermeer painting where they had like removed a layer and found an angel that he had painted that he had painted over and they like removed that layer and it was on display in Dresden so they went to go see it because they'd seen it before the restoration and like that's super fun like good for you guys but like yeah yeah so like there's always like I love like there's always stuff that like you're like what's under this like is there like a painting underneath this can be like you know something better underneath it something that can tell us what he was thinking it's just like it's it's it's mysterious and fun because i think 99.999% of us can't do it so we're like i don't know how did he do it maybe you you said you were in the 16th chapel right

yes when you look at like the paintings of the 16th chapel like to me like those are like crazy realistic and like hyper detail it's partially because like everybody's naked so like you have to have a lot more detail. But, and also like, I mean, Sistine Chapel, like I said, doing the Presco painting is so fucking hard. And then, like, I feel like just harder than regular painting just because you're painting on the wet plaster. It has to, you have to paint before it dries. You have to, like, do all these things. And he did it, like, laying down on rafter because it is high.

It's not like my ceiling where I can be on, like, a ladder to, like, I painted my ceiling with, like, a roller the other day and it was exhausting, you know? like a three-story chapel he didn't like that's crazy crazy talented and awesome yeah and totally like we're seeing but but it's and it's just like again like the thing that it's I can't get over as someone who loves art is when you are looking at it in person you're like this is something I have seen so many times and reproduced so many times and then like I'm standing here in Milan staring at the last supper and like I'm exactly where Leonardo would have stood and been like what I need to add you know whatever like whatever however he talked yeah that's the part of it that like blows me away it's like it's like

it's like the history part of it like you're there in front of which is why like now that I know that the last supper was is in a church like it feels a lot more meaningful to like see it because you're like to your point you're like holy shit like this guy was standing he'll came in here probably like every day for like I don't know months or whatever however long it took and was just like having his tea over here and then like it's pretty you can put yourself in that whereas like I feel like the Mona Lisa is hard to put myself in that like now it's like now that you told me all this stuff I'm like it just seems to just attract crazy people I know like it's like you know wait why do they throw the soup on her what to protest like food insecurity

what does that mean just like that there's not access to like fresh food in different parts of France and so they're protesting that which is like a real thing to protest absolutely you know there's food insecurity and food deserts all over the world um where people don't have access to good food but you know if you want to bring attention to your cause that's that's one way to do it I mean you're right don't do it you're right that is definitely a way to make sure people I mean, we're talking about it right now. Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, and I always am like, you know, even like, you know, being in, like, I love the Met Museum in New York and being in those places, like, you're so close to those paintings, you know, so there's something special about her that she needs to be behind all that glass because people keep wanting to, you know, make a point.

I'm sure that, like, the dude who thought I was in love with her is not the only person who thought he was in love with her. I know Taylor if I ever call you and say hey I'm going to the Lou because I found my wife just please please chain me to a desk I will yeah absolutely not but we can go to the Louvre and see it we should we should do that when we tour France Taylor can you do like a high series can you do a series about the Boston heist and like what's a Boston face it was a some museum in Boston and these things have never been found and they stole I forgot what they stole but I remember, like, it was a really big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Gardner Museum, heist, theft. Yeah, yeah, and they stole Vermeer, I don't know who this guy is, I don't know, Rembrandt, they stole a couple of Rembrandts. Fun, yeah, I'm going to find more, because these are, you know, I know they're thefts, but they're fun thefts.

But you can break it out. it would be cool because you do like fun thefts and not so fun thefts like it would be interesting to also know like what else has happened in war yeah we don't know about like what did the nazi steal what was destroyed like how many of those churches were bombed that like had crazy art in them like totally so much and like i think i mentioned this maybe before but when i was in college i interned at the brooklyn museum and it was like right after nine 11 so we were like you know prepping for danger um and we thought that um you know we're like what what will we do with the art so i went into like the archives and found the letters and all the places that we had

put the art from the brooklyn museum during world war two and it was really cool they like shipped it off to long island and like had it in someone's basement i think wasn't their art hidden in the built more that we had when we went to the billmore to visit it they were like some big works of art were kept here as well because it was like out of the way of a place that might be bombed by like the Nazis. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. A lot of stuff is really fun.

It'd be cool to do something about around that. Yeah, there was something else there that I wanted to touch on. I'm totally blinking now, but. I haven't had more heist. Yeah. Yeah. If folks know of heist, that'll be really cool. So anyways, that's awesome.

Thanks for sharing that, Taylor. Thanks, I'm going to go down a rabbit hole about Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci, and the whole host for others now. so and I don't even know our guy is one of these just fascinating that part of like history is super interesting so cool anything else to report before we sign off

I just had a fun short conversation with our friend Nadine about taking down statues because of like you know of people who we no longer want to celebrate and there was one that she was like we're not taking this down because she lived in Canada and she was like

because he wasn't a racist but I just think he was a drunk and we agreed that if we took down all of the statues of people just because they were drunk so we don't have any statues And we laughed. Yeah, yeah. That's funny. That's probably true.

Yeah, and yeah, that's it. Let us know if you have any ideas. Like this one, like, shit, you can be a very good heist. Let me know. Doom to Fail pod at g-mails.com. And we're at Doom to Fail on all social media. And we will see you there. Do Lufthansa, I'll be fun, too.

Anyway, okay, yeah, sorry. Dudafell pod, write to us. There's a ton of a heist ideas. I'm like going down a rabbit hole. We can't believe that Taylor Swift is pregnant and her Trevor Kelsey are already married and the Chiefs from the Super Bowl. Unbelievable. Unbelievable stuff. I hope you celebrate Swift Kelsey Day.

Yes. And, yeah, we're really, really excited to. So thank you. Thanks, Taylor. We'll go ahead and cut things off.