Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Stealing the Mona Lisa

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

The Mona Lisa is unquestionably the most famous painting in the world. Heck, it is probably the most famous work of art in the world. Yet the reason why it is so famous is due to an event which happened on the 21st of August 1911. It was wasn’t for the events of that day, the Mona Lisa would probably just be another painting hanging on the walls of the Louver. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Mona Lisa is unquestionably the most famous painting in the world. Heck, it's probably the most famous work of art in the world. Yet the reason why it's so famous is due to an event which happened on the 21st of August, 1911. If it wasn't for the events of that day, the Mona Lisa would probably just be another painting hanging on the walls of the Louvre. Find out what happened to make the Mona Lisa so famous in this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time. to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thulein podcast from NPR. This episode is brought to you by the Travel Photography Academy. Have you ever been on a trip and wondered why your photos don't turn out like the images you see in travel magazines? If you're going to spend thousands of dollars on a trip and hundreds to thousands of dollars on a You owe it to yourself to get the highest quality images from your trip. That's why I created the Travel Photography Academy.

I set out to travel around the world in 2007 with an expensive camera, and I had no idea how to use it. As I traveled around the world, I taught myself the art of travel photography, eventually mastering it to a point where I was named Travel Photographer of the Year three times in North America. The Travel Photography Academy is an online course that teaches you everything you need to know to master your camera and to take better photos on your next trip. To improve your photography and to get better images on your next trip, visit Travel Photography Academy.com or click in the link in the show notes. The Mona Lisa is perhaps the greatest painting by the artist Leonardo da Vinci. There are only about 15 paintings by Leonardo which still exist and there are debates as to the authenticity of several of them.

The Mona Lisa, however, is unquestionably a Leonardo. The painting is of a noble woman from Florence named Lisa Giacondo. The term Mona Lisa just means the Lady Lisa in. an Italian. It is only known as the Mona Lisa in English. In Italian, it's known as La Gioconda, and in French, it's La Geoconde. The painting itself is an oil painting on popular wood panels. Leonardo worked on the painting for years, taking it with him in the last years of his life when he went to work in the court of King Francis I in France. It is estimated that it was painted between 1503 and 1506, but there are estimates that he may have worked on it as long as 1517.

The image is one of the best examples of his Fumato technique, which consists of very small brushstrokes to create very soft transitions between colors without any harsh lines. It is undeniably his masterpiece. The Mona Lisa became the possession of King Francis upon the death of Leonardo and stayed in the palace of Fontainebleau under the possession of the French crown until the French Revolution of 1797, when it was placed on display in the Louvre. It remains there until today, save for a brief period where it was hung in the bedroom of Napoleon. All of these things make the Mona Lisa a very significant painting, an important painting, and an interesting painting.

But it doesn't explain why a portrait of an otherwise unknown woman from Italy is the most famous painting in the world. To understand that, we need to fast forward to August 21, 1911. On that day, the Mona Lisa disappeared. It literally just vanished. It was hanging on the wall with several other paintings, and no one even noticed it was gone until the next day when it was discovered missing by the painter. Louis Barad. There was a great deal of confusion at first. The museum thought that the painting

might have been taken to get photographed. Eventually, they realized that the painting had in fact been stolen, and the blame was first pointed in the direction of modern artists. The first person taken into custody was the French poet, Geyom Apollinaire, who was a vocal critic of classic art. He was held for about a week and then pointed the finger at his friend Pablo Picasso. Eventually, both men were exonerated of the crime. All the borders to France were put on alert, and everyone going out of the country had their belonging search. Ships were prevented from leaving port until the vessels were searched for the painting. The day after the theft, it was headline news around the world.

Papers in Sao Paulo, New York, London, and Washington reported the news. In Paris, the papers expressed outrage at the loss of a national treasure. The French magazine La Illustration wrote, What audacious criminal, what mystifier, what manic collector, what insane lover has committed this abduction. They offered a reward of 40,000 francs, which works out to a bit under a thousand, today. Their competitor, the Paris Journal, then up the reward to 50,000 francs. In the weeks after the theft conspiracy theories as to who might have stolen it became popular pastimes in the media, rewards and false leads began pouring in from all over the world. The Louvre remained closed for

almost a month, and when it reopened, crowds of people lined up just to see the empty spot on the wall where the missing Mona Lisa used to hang. Some even left flowers in front of the empty spot on the wall as if they were honoring someone who had died. The trail went cold. and for two years there were no leads in the case. In November 1913, an art dealer in Florence named Alfredo Gary received a letter from a man called Leonardo, who claimed to have the Mona Lisa in his possession. He said he was an Italian, who was suddenly seized with the desire to return his country to at least one of the many treasures, which, especially in the Napoleonic era, had been stolen from Italy.

It should be noted that Napoleon didn't steal the Mona Lisa. It had been in France since the death of Da Vinci. Geary contacted the Uffizi Gallery and was given information about the back of the painting that no one else would know unless they had access to the actual Mona Lisa. After weeks of cat and mouse, Geary and the man named Leonardo finally met in Florence where the painting was produced and Geary was able to authenticate it as the real Mona Lisa. The two took the painting to the Uffizi and the man who had the painting was arrested. The man who called himself by the codename Leonardo was actually Vincenzo Perugia. He was an Italian who was a low-level employee at the Louvre. The heist was one of the most simplest capers ever carried out. Perugia simply visited the Louvre on the day before on a Sunday,

ducked into the storage closet, stayed there overnight, and then walked out the next morning wearing an artist smock, took the painting off the wall, covered it up, and walked out the door. During his trial, it was determined that he had acted alone and was sentenced to one year and 15 days in prison. After his sentencing, he was reported to have said, it could have been worse. When the painting was announced having been recovered,

the media went into overdrive, and this is when the Mona Lisa became the most famous painting in the world. The Italian government agreed to return the painting, but they did so in a very roundabout way, taking the painting to major cities in Italy for exhibition while slowly working their way to France. In each city, tens of thousands of people showed up to see the painting for themselves. On the first day it was returned to the Louvre. Over 100,000 people showed up to gaze upon France's return treasure. Since the painting was returned, the Mona Lisa has returned. remain the most famous painting in the world. In 1962 and 1963, the painting was on loan in the

United States, where it was valued at over $100 million for insurance purposes, which would be worth $850 million today. With the recent sale of Leonardo's painting, Salvador Mundi, for $450 million, it is estimated that the Mona Lisa would have a value of over $2.5 billion at auction today. The popularity of the painting is best described by the director of the Louvre, who noted that 80% of the 10 million annual visitors who go to the museum each year, go directly to see the Mona Lisa, and leave. This is a brand new podcast, and as such, it can really use your support. If you know someone who is curious and you think would like the show,

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