Short History Of... - The Mona Lisa

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world. 500 years old and just 77x53cm in size, it is kept behind bulletproof glass in the Louvre museum in Paris, where it draws 10 million visitors a year. But how did a small portrait find global fame? Who is the woman in the painting, and why is the world so intrigued by her smile? This is a Short History Of the Mona Lisa. Written by Nicola Rayner. With thanks to Donald Sassoon, historian and the author of Mona Lisa: The History of the World’s Most Famous Painting. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's August the 21st, 1911. Six o'clock on a Monday morning in Paris. In his apartment in the 10th arrondissement, two miles from the Louvre Museum, Vincenzo Perugia is performing his morning ablutions. A slightly built Italian, not quite into his thirties, he works here as a painter and decorator. But recently he's had a different task on his mind. Once he's finished waxing the curled ends of his moustache, he nods into the mirror, satisfied that today will be the day. He dresses and makes the familiar journey to the Louvre. Monday is the day when the museum is closed to

visitors, so there's no one to see him in his white worker's coat as he slips in through the heavy wooden doors. He swiftly makes his way to the Salon Carré, a huge gallery with a richly gilded ceiling. Faces stare out at him from the Renaissance masterpieces all around on the walls. Perugia keeps his head down as he walks, but he's noting everything around him. On a typical day in 1911, there are 166 guards on duty in the museum. Today there are just 12. It is the best chance for a plan he has been formulating for a while, but the final decision has yet to be made. An enormous painting by Paolo Veronese dominates the wall opposite him. It tells the gospel story of the woman who washes the feet of Christ at the house of Simon the Pharisee.

It is immense, almost ten meters wide and four and a half meters high. It suits his purpose as a painting by an Italian master, but it is far too big. His gaze falls below to a small portrait of a veiled woman dwarfed by the giant above it. At just 77 centimeters high and 53 centimeters wide, it is the perfect size. Perugia lifts the painting carefully from the wall without making a sound. Carrying it under his arm, he walks slowly across the wooden floor and out of the salon carré. Then he slips through a door into a small service staircase. There, he hides the picture behind some student copies propped up against the wall.

But at the bottom of the stairs, he finds the door locked. He tries to force his way through with a screwdriver, but the doorknob comes off in his hand. He is trapped. Leaning against the wall, he tries to decide what to do, but then there's the sound of footsteps, his hands shaking. Perugia takes a seat on the stairs, praying he won't be recognized. Eventually a man squeezes past him. It's not someone he knows. He exhales with relief. The other man fishes a key from his pocket. He stops for a moment and turns to ask why the doorknob is missing. Perugia just shrugs. It seems to be enough for the other worker, who now unlocks the door and lets himself through.

The moment he's gone, Perugia gets to his feet. He runs up the stairs to the spot where he has hidden the painting on the landing. Carefully, he turns the four metal clips that hold the masterpiece in place and removes it from its 16th century frame. It's not painted on canvas but poplar wood, which will make it harder to conceal. But he's already come this far. He hides the empty frame behind the other pictures on the stairs and returns up the way he came, the painting concealed under his white worker's smock. He moves through the museum quickly and quietly. No one seems to see him. He has almost made it. Out on the street, he throws the doorknob into a ditch and jumps on a bus.

But a few seconds later, he realizes it's headed in the wrong direction. Flustered, he gets up at the next stop, flags down a horse-drawn cab, and hurries home. As he closes his front door behind him, he could laugh out loud. No one saw him. No one stopped him. Vincenzo Perugia has walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world. It is visited by more than 10 million people a year who can follow signs throughout the Louvre directing them to its superstar masterpiece.

Kept behind bulletproof glass, it hangs in solitary splendor in the center of the Salle des Etats, the largest room in the palace. It has been copied, parodied, and referenced in popular culture more than any other. But how did this small portrait reach such heights of global fame? Why did a work by an Italian master come to be

so closely associated with its Parisian home, the Louvre? Who is the woman in the painting, and why is the world so intrigued by her smile? I'm John Hopkins, and this is a short history of the Mona Lisa. It's 1503, and Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci, known by his contemporaries simply as Leonardo, stands at his easel. A young woman with a broad, pale face sits in front of him. She is dressed simply in dark clothing, with a translucent veil covering her head. She wears no jewels or other embellishments.

In the fashion of the day, she has no eyebrows. Her hands are empty, meaning there is no symbol of status or clue to her identity. With her left hand resting on the wooden arm of the chair, she twists a little to place the right on top of it. This position gives an impression of movement, as if she has only just turned towards the artist, her attention caught by something he has said. Her gaze is unabashed, perhaps defiant. Her brown eyes glance to the right. She smiles. But who is she? Donald Sassoon is a historian and the author of Mona Lisa, the History of the World's Most Famous Painting. The woman depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, which is the name we use in England,

but the name the French use is La Joconde, the name the Italians use is La Gioconda, uses la gioconda. The name the Italians use is la gioconda. Almost certainly, her real name was Lisa Gerardini, and she was the wife of a Florentine merchant called Francesco del Giocondo, and hence la gioconda, which also means the happy one. He was a wealthy merchant. Mona is misspelled. It should be Mona with two Ns, which is short for Mia Donna, my lady. And therefore, Mona Lisa means my lady Lisa. But because Lisa Gerardini was not a famous woman, art sleuths have looked elsewhere for the identity of the sitter. Theories and counter theories have developed. There is a theory which is actually a sort of self-portrait, but frankly, this is one of the most ludicrous theories. Then there are theories that because no one had heard

of Lisa Gherardini, that in fact, it should have been someone much better known, like Isabella d'Este, who was one of the key women of the Italian Renaissance, patron of the arts, the ruler of Mantua for very many years. However, there is a drawing of Isabella d'Este by Leonardo, and she doesn't look a bit like the Mona Lisa. And then there are other theories that she was, in fact, the mistress of François Premier Francis I, king of France and so on. But frankly, all those are purely speculation. And it just creates more mystery around the Mona Lisa. One feature of the Mona Lisa has attracted speculation more than any other. The sitter's smile. It is Giorgio Vasari, writing in 1547, who provides the earliest explanation for it.

In his book, The Lives of the Artists, he explains that Leonardo engaged singers, musicians and jesters to keep her entertained, so that she would appear cheerful. The smile is not terribly original. I mean, lots of paintings in the Renaissance have the person smiling. I should say that you never see the teeth, so it's never a laugh. One of the reasons, of course, you don't show the teeth is because the teeth of even well-off people in the Renaissance were terrible.

And in fact, the only people who laugh and show their teeth are buffoons and clowns and crazies. So any smile will be a very contained smile. It isn't the smile that first captures the attention of Leonardo's contemporaries, but the portrait's composition, which fellow artist Raphael returns to again and again for inspiration. Most of the portraits in the Renaissance are either you see the person straight away, they look at you and they don't seem to move. It's a portrait after all. Alternatively, it's a profile. straight away, they look at you and they don't seem to move. It's a portrait after all. Alternatively, it's a profile.

So the Mona Lisa originality is that her torso is actually three quarters because she takes her right hand and puts it on the left hand of the armchair on which she's sitting. But the face looks straight. So it's a portrait of someone in movement. In fact, one could even imagine that she is in a standard Renaissance position and then someone calls her and so she looks back towards you. It's called the contrapposto position. Leonardo isn't the inventor of the contrapposto position.

The pose had been employed in sculpture by the ancient Greeks. But he masters it so perfectly in the Mona Lisa that other artists begin to paint subjects in what becomes known as the Gioconda pose, in contrapposto position, with folded hands. What's also innovative is Leonardo's technique of building up layers of paint, from dark to light, which gives his portrait a feeling of depth, the sense of a three-dimensional figure.

He works obsessively on it, conjuring the sitter's face with painstakingly fine brushstrokes. Each layer of oil paint must dry before he can start the next. The second major innovation is a so-called sfumato technique, which means that the side of the mouth of the lips are a bit blurry, and the side of the eyes are also blurry. Now, every child knows that the key thing in the expression of a portrait is the side of the eyes and the side of the mouth, because if they both go up, it's a smiling face, and if they go down, it's a sad face. By making it blurry, you're not quite sure what her expression is. She may be smiling, maybe she's not smiling.

And this indecision allows the person who looks at the painting to decide for themselves. Leonardo begins the portrait late in life, in his 50s, and works on it for four years. But for some reason, he never hands the Mona Lisa over to Francesco del Giocondo, the Florentine merchant who commissioned the portrait of his young wife. Perhaps Leonardo is never satisfied with the painting. Perhaps he never considers it finished.

Either way, he doesn't part with it, but keeps it with him for more than a decade, even as he considers a move abroad. It is July the 12th, 1515, in a banqueting hall in Lyon, central France. A day of displays and ceremony to celebrate the new French king, Francis I, is coming to a close. But, as everyone here knows, there is one very special surprise yet to come. The 20-year-old monarch sits with his wife, the 15-year-old Queen Claude,

on a raised platform at one end of the hall. The high-ceilinged room is sumptuously draped in the bleu de France, the heraldic azure that has been the color of the French monarchy for centuries. Embroidered onto the fabric are golden fleurs-de-lis, which glint in the candlelight. Tall and charismatic, the young king has a military bearing and large nose. He's proud of his motto, Nutrisco et Extinguo, I feed and I extinguish, which proves he's a soldier and a man of appetites. But the king is a lover of art and beauty too.

His cloak of ermine is trimmed with gold and lined with heron's feathers. His buckles sparkle with jewels. From where he's sitting, Francis can hear the courtiers gossiping about the day's spectacles. A white stag that towed a ship across the river. Rich tableaux depicting the monarch battling his enemy. The prettiest women in Lyon, standing on columns, each holding up a letter of the king's name.

But then a curtain is drawn aside and the conversation drops to a murmur. The rumour is that the pièce de résistance is a gift from Florence, at the behest of the Pope Leo X, a gift designed by the great artist Leonardo da Vinci. Now, a delegation from Florence, dressed in crimson, enters the room. Carefully, very carefully, they carry a huge carved lion onto the floor, the symbol of Lyon and also of Florence. Once it's set on the ground, one of the Florentine merchants steps forward with an enormous key. There are gasps as the crowd realize why. The merchant inserts the

key into the lion's keyhole and whines. There is just the slightest of pauses. A worried look passes between the Florentines, and then, in slow but steady steps, the creature moves towards the king. The crowd starts to clap, but one of the Florentines holds up a hand to stop them. There is more.

The king leans back. What could be more brilliant than a moving beast created by human hand? And then the animal stops, and its breast bursts open, bearing brilliant white lilies, the symbol of France. The crowd gasps and starts to cheer. Even on a day of such magnificent pageantry, this surpasses anything Francis I has seen. Both he and his royal wife beam with pleasure and the king makes a gesture of approval in the direction of the Florentines.

They bow in return, knowing they can go home with the message that the king is pleased with his gift. Leonardo captivated the imagination of modern 19th century intellectuals because he was not just a painter, because he was also a scientist, Because he invented, now we would say, the helicopter, the plane, you know, all sorts of things. In other words, he was what was regarded as a true Renaissance man, of which painting was only one thing. Whereas Michelangelo, it's art, statues, statues and paintings, Raphael paintings. But Leonardo is quite different. Leonardo is also a scientist. He leaves hundreds and hundreds of drawings about all sorts of things, about bodies, dissections, this and that. But it is notable that of Leonardo's thousands of sketches and drawings, there is not a single study for the Mona Lisa. In 1516, the year after the mechanical line is presented to Francis I,

Leonardo's patron dies. At 63, the artist is no longer a young man, and the competition for patronage, the system by which the wealthy sponsor artists, is fierce, especially in his native Italy. The big guy in Rome at the time is Michelangelo. Michelangelo painted the whole of the Sistine Chapel in four years, which is more or less how long it took poor Leonardo to paint this very tiny portrait of Lisa Gherardini. The other rich place in Italy then was Venice. But in Venice, the big shot was Titian, who was dishing out portraits left,

right and center. He had a whole team of students helping him, so he couldn't go there so he went to france in 1516 went to amboise which is on the loire at the court of the king of france remembering the ingenious gift in lyon the young french monarch grants leonardo the official title pintre du roi, the king's painter. Leonardo now has a generous pension and a handsome red brick manor house in which to live, a peaceful place in which to spend his last days sketching and painting in the soft Touraine light. He stays in France for three years, from 1516 until 1519. And it's there that the great artist dies,

as legend has it, in the arms of the king himself. The assumption is he took the unfinished painting of Mona Lisa, which is why it is in France, which is quite a major point in the history of the renown of the Mona Lisa. I mean, to put it crudely, had it gone to Bulgaria, we probably would not know much about the Mona Lisa. Location, location, location. To be in France was a real major PR point. Francis I buys the Mona Lisa either from Leonardo himself

or after his death from Francesco Melzi, one of the artist's favorite pupils and his primary heir. It becomes part of the royal collection, kept within the secluded walls of the French palaces. But not all the French kings appreciate the portrait's special qualities. In 1625, the Duke of Buckingham visits France on behalf of Charles I of England. He's been tasked with collecting Henrietta Maria, the sister of Louis XIII, and bringing her back to England to marry the the king but during his stay one particular painting catches the art-loving duke's eye

the king of france louis xiii knew absolutely nothing about art the duke of buckingham did and when he saw the mona lisa thought well this is really nice it's pretty and when he saw the Mona Lisa thought well this is really nice it's pretty and so he told the king let's have a swap you give me the Mona Lisa and in return I will give you a painting we have by Holbein

who was probably then as well known or better known than Leonardo and we even have a Titian so how about that you give me the Leonardo and I'll even have a Titian. So how about that? You give me the Leonardo and I'll give you a Titian and I'll also give you a Holbein. And Louis XIII said, fine.

Luckily for the French, but not so luckily for London, the courtiers of Louis XIII said, no, don't do that. Don't do that. We keep the Mona Lisa. It's Leonardo is, you know, big shot just for a whole bane. And Titian, everybody has a Titian.

I mean, there are millions of them around and so on. So the swap did not take place. Though the Duke of Buckingham isn't the last man to fall for her charms, for now the Mona Lisa remains in France. For more than a century it hangs on the walls of royal palaces, but then that cloistered, aristocratic world comes under threat. By the late 18th century France is in trouble. Costly involvement in the American Revolution, as well as the extravagant spending of King Louis XVI, has left the country almost bankrupt. Poor harvests, drought, and skyrocketing bread prices kindle fury at a regime that imposes heavy taxes on the poorest members of society, but fails to provide any relief. On July 14, 1789, the increasingly tense situation explodes with the storming of the Bastille, an old fortress, and a symbol of the king's power.

One of the unforeseen consequences of the French Revolution is that they have to decide what to do with a royal collection. And so they decide to take all the paintings, about 500 of them, which belong to the French royal family, and to put it in the Louvre, which was a royal palace, and the Louvre becomes a museum.

We are talking 1796, 1797. So it's another stroke of luck for the Mona Lisa because though it is part of a huge collection, I mean huge, 500, now it's 6,000, nevertheless, they are now in the centre of Paris and Paris is about to become the cultural capital of Europe. Hanging on the walls of the Louvre, the Mona Lisa catches the eye of another powerful man

by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. He claims the painting for his bedroom wall at the Tuileries Palace, the royal residence adjacent to the Louvre. For four years, she is a silent witness to everything that occurs in that chamber, as Napoleon flaunts his lovers as revenge upon his unfaithful wife Josephine. and flaunts his lovers as revenge upon his unfaithful wife Josephine. When he becomes emperor in 1804, he decides it's time to give up his beloved Madame Lys and returns her to the Louvre. In the early 19th century, the museum becomes a bustling place where rich foreign tourists and painters gather to learn from its treasures.

Artists are given priority in the new ten-day revolutionary week. They have the museum to themselves for five days, two are for cleaning, and just three for the general public. But it's a far cry from today's high-security galleries. Here, the artists pick up masterpieces and prop them on easels, even draw chalk lines across them. The French artist Cezanne writes, The Louvre is a book wherein we learn to read. Many professional copyists who paint replicas of the museum's masterpieces to sell are women. It is considered to be work suited to them, morally preferable to music or drama. But the preponderance of unaccompanied single women means that men soon start using the museum as a pickup joint. One writer even gives advice on

how to make the approach. He recommends putting up one's easel next to an alluring female copyist and striking up a conversation just before the museum closes so it can be continued outside. But by the mid-nineteenth century, some male visitors start to harbor similar fantasies about the women depicted on the walls instead. One, Théophile Gautier, a French writer and art critic, takes to lingering in front of the Mona Lisa. Théophile Gautier was a writer of successful books, a novelist, but also he wrote travel books. He went to Italy, went to Spain and so on. He also was, and that's quite important, an art connoisseur and wrote about art in French journals at the time.

And he is the first who started talking about the femme fatale, the mysterious smile. And it is he who transformed Lisa Gerardini from a cheerful housewife into a mysterious, iconic woman. into a mysterious, iconic woman. The Mona Lisa starts to feature in Gautier's essays and reviews as a femme fatale. She is always there, smiling with sensuality, mocking her numerous lovers, he writes in 1867 in his Guide to the Louvre. It helps that Lisa Garadini is not a well-known figure.

Writers can project upon her whatever they wish, including their own fantasies. Other art critics follow in his footsteps to stand in front of the small portrait and fantasize about the woman in the painting. Now, once the French intelligentsia, copying Théophile Gaultier, went on about one feels attracted to the Mona Lisa and, you know, she's devouring me, I'm in love. Then the English followed suit and Walter Pater, Victorian literary critic, wrote lines which schoolboys and schoolgirls had to learn by heart, at least at the beginning

of the 20th century. She's older than the rocks among which she sits. Like the vampire, she has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave. Female writers seem to be more immune to the Mona Lisa's charms. Female writers seem to be more immune to the Mona Lisa's charms. The critic Jeanne de Flandresi notes in 1903, She is not beautiful. Her cheeks are full. Her eyes puffy. She is transformed into something which is basically a male fantasy.

A woman you can never get a hold of. A woman who is beyond your reach. This is very much a male fantasy. Georges Sand, who was a woman novelist in the 19th century, has a completely different take on the Mona Lisa. She says it's a very nice painting, you know, end of story. She's much more relaxed about it, but not the men. By the turn of the century, the Mona Lisa has been widely copied and praised and lionized on the page by high-profile fans.

To those in the know, the sitter's smile has become officially mysterious. But though the educated elite might know about the Mona Lisa, she has yet to stoke the hearts of the masses. That is, until an event that catches the attention of the rapidly expanding popular press catapults the painting to worldwide fame. It's August 31, 1911, and Paris is still sweltering in the last days of an intense summer heatwave. A little girl clutching her father's hand threads her way past the peddlers outside the Louvre. The traders' postcards and knick-knacks all seem to have the same picture on them,

an image of a woman she's seen at home on the front page of the city newspapers. Her father has told her the woman's smile is famous. But on most of these reproductions, she looks quite serious, dressed in dark clothing with her hands in her lap. There are other, sillier postcards too. One shows a thief running away with a painting under his arm. In another, the woman grins broadly above the caption, now happy to be on the loose after four centuries. The little girl trots to keep up,

but pauses just for a moment to admire the piles of flowers outside the museum's walls. They remind her of the bouquets she's seen on graves in Père Lachaise's cemetery. It's as if someone has died. The museum has been closed for a week after what happened. Now it is open again, everybody in Paris has had the same idea, to visit the scene of the crime. Even people like her father, who have never visited the Louvre before. The crowd smells of perfume and sweat. Everyone has dressed up to look their best for the trip. sweat. Everyone has dressed up to look their best for the trip. In the jostling queue, she hears the same name repeated over and over by the visitors, La Jaconde. Eventually, she emerges into the relative cool of the museum. Now the girl walks with her mouth open, staring. She has lived in

Paris all her life, but she has never seen anything like this. It is like a palace from a fairy tale. She passes statues bigger than people, so old that their arms or heads have fallen off. There are paintings in gold frames and high decorated ceilings. She and her father follow the same direction as the rest of the crowd to a room he tells her is called the Salon Carré. There is a cluster of people standing under an enormous painting. The girl recognizes Jesus in the center of it. There is a woman washing his feet. But the crowd aren't looking at the picture.

They're staring at something else under it. Four hooks on the wall. A small, empty space. The girl knows because her father has told her it is the place where Leonardo da Vinci's La Jaconde used to hang. But she's no longer there. On the 21st of August 1911, the painting is stolen. Now, I should say other paintings had been stolen before. So the theft by itself is not the key factor. There are other factors, and that is the creation of the popular press. The popular press begins to exist at the end of the 19th century with daily papers like the Petit Parisien, which then sold more than one million copies a day, the Daily Mail in England. So the popular press will only talk about art if something sexy happens.

And the theft is exactly something that's sexy. And the theft is exactly something that's sexy. It helps the Mona Lisa's journey to global fame that it is stolen in August. Now, as every newspaperman knows, nothing much happens in August. You know, the government is on holiday and so on. And so the stroke of luck is in central Perugia, the 30-year-old painter and decorator, an immigrant from Italy to Paris, he had been working at the Louvre on a Monday. Monday was then the closing day for the Louvre and he stole it. Initially, no one notices the Mona Lisa has gone. They think it's been moved to be photographed for a poster or catalog. The alarm isn't raised until 24 hours later, when an artist arrives with a plan to paint

a woman gazing at herself in the portrait's reflective glass. His inquiries about the whereabouts of the masterpiece lead to the discovery of the theft. A guard finds the empty frame hidden on a service staircase. In shock, the Louvre closes for a week. The prefect of the Paris police, Louis Lepine, the man that the papers call the greatest policeman in the world, commissions 60 detectives to search for the missing work. The press goes berserk.

When the museum reopens, more people come to see the empty space where the Mona Lisa used to hang than visited the painting the previous year. Suddenly there is an appetite for copies of the portrait. It is reproduced on postcards, chocolate boxes, leaflets, matchboxes, and in magazines and newspapers all over the world. The police make 6,500 copies to help find the painting. In its absence, the Mona Lisa finds unprecedented fame. Wild theories emerge. Some blame the Germans for the theft.

Others point the finger at the rich Americans who are in Paris to buy art. There is even a rumor of a mysterious man who is in love with the painting and used to stare at the Mona Lisa for hours. Does he have her now? There are high-profile suspects too. Pablo Picasso and his friend the poet Apollinaire are called in for questioning. In a strange twist, it emerges that the young painter had been unwittingly connected to another theft. Unbeknownst to him, the ancient Iberian sculpted heads he'd used when creating his 1907 masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which marked the beginning of Cubism, turn out to have been stolen from the Louvre.

But when the statuettes are returned to the museum, that line of inquiry is closed. It would have been so much more exciting if Picasso himself, out of sheer jealousy against Leonardo, had actually destroyed it. But then all that contributes to the cult of the Mona Lisa. Every single event is as if some kind of film director or a PR agency said, how do we make this painting the best known in the world? So someone says, well, let's have intellectuals talking about it. Well, let's have someone steal it. Well, let's have Picasso steal it. Let's have, and on and on and on. And in fact, all these things happen more or less coincidentally. Now, the Louvre acquires two new guard dogs,

who appear on the front page of the Petit Parisien. But the months slip by, and there is no sign of the Mona Lisa, and by 1913, it is no longer listed in the museum's catalogues. On November 29, 1913, an antique dealer in Florence named Alfredo Geri receives a letter. Signed by one Leonardo Vincenzo, it promises the return of an Italian treasure to its homeland, in return for 500,000 lira. Intrigued, the dealer calls on another expert, the curator of the famous Uffizi Gallery, for assistance. The two men agree to meet the writer of the letter at a modest hotel in Florence, the Albergio Tripoli Italia. Florence, the Albergio Tripoli Italia. Leonardo Vincenzo, the alias the thief Perugia is using,

turns out to be a humble painter-decorator. If the antiques dealer and Uffizi curator are surprised, a greater shock is to come when they are led to his bedroom. Here he pulls some clothes from a wooden crate before fishing out nothing less than the missing Mona Lisa. The men take it to the window to examine it in the daylight, and find the correct Louvre inventory number on the back. They persuade Perugia that they need to take it to the Uffizi to examine the craquelière, the small cracks in the old painting, a pattern as unique as a fingerprint. But they are stopped on the way out by the receptionist, who thinks they have stolen an artwork from the hotel. Once they've convinced her that it's nothing to worry about, they proceed to the Uffizi, where the painting's identity is confirmed. Promising Perugia his payment back at the hotel, the two men swiftly call the police.

An Italian living and working in Paris, Perugia had been part of the team that installed protective glass around the paintings at the Louvre. He stole the Mona Lisa to return it to what he believed was its rightful home in Italy, revenge for Napoleon's looting of his homeland's art. Revenge too for the bullying he experienced in Paris, where he was mockingly nicknamed Macaroni by his French colleagues. After stealing the portrait that fateful morning in August 1911, Perugia kept the Mona Lisa in his Parisian apartment for two and a half years, where it remained even when the police came knocking, investigating a list of former Louvre employees. Perugia later

claims he signed the police statement on the table under which the Mona Lisa was hiding, though it's a story that turns out to be too good to be true. In reality, the stolen painting remained hidden in a crate in his apartment until things quietened down. Eventually, Perugia decided the time had come to return the Mona Lisa to Florence for the first time in 400 years, and accordingly wrote his letter to a dealer there. His plan to sell it, however, has gone awry. He is sentenced to just over a year in prison, but is released after seven months. With the news of the discovery, Mona Lisa fever returns with a vengeance, sweeping through Italy as well as France.

There are Mona Lisa knick-knacks, Mona Lisa hairdos. Ardent fans write love letters to the portrait. Before its return to France, the painting is exhibited at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, where 30,000 people see it in just four hours. There's a riot among those not lucky enough to make it in. After a week in Florence, the Mona Lisa is taken to Rome, where it is handed over to the French ambassador. It's taken by train to Paris. Huge crowd is there welcoming the Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa is returned. The Mona Lisa has come back. The satirical press has all sorts of cartoons, including one in which she's coming back and she holds a baby. At the back, there is a handsome Italian, and they have a headline, the explanation for the mystery.

And now she's really well known because the press throughout the world talks about the return of the Mona Lisa. Vincenzo Perugia is condemned to prison, but he has his court of an hour of fame. And when he dies, his death is mentioned in newspapers, the man who stole the Mona Lisa. But was he?

Some aren't convinced that Perugia could have pulled off such an outrageous heist alone. In 1932, two decades after the theft, American journalist Carl Decker shares a story in the Saturday Evening Post which he claims to have been sitting on for years. According to him, the real thief is the mysterious Macque de Valfierno, an aristocratic mastermind who employed Perugia to do his dirty work. Valfierno, Decker claims, had the Mona Lisa meticulously forged six times to sell to half a dozen gullible millionaires. But it turns out to be just another tall tale.

Of course, it's a great disappointment that it should be just a painter decorator who do it. It would have been so much better from the point of view of the novelistic treatment of this had it been a gang of intelligent thieves who steal it on behalf of some American millionaires. So you have more legends created about it. Every one of these legends contributes to increasing the fame and the renown of the Mona Lisa. fame and the renown of the Mona Lisa. Stories of multiple Mona Lisas persist. A man called John R. Eyre reignites an earlier theory that there are in fact two Mona Lisas, one in the Louvre, the other a superior rendering that

Leonardo handed over to Francesco del Giocondo. Its sheer coincidence, Eyre insists, that this second version has ended up in the hands of his own stepson. It's another bogus claim. But he starts a craze, the hunt for the so-called real Mona Lisa. Others all over the world join in with enthusiasm. Everyone wants a piece of the Mona Lisa's magic, including prominent figures in the art world. When Marcel Duchamp wants to mock high art, he gets a postcard of the Mona Lisa and puts on the postcard moustaches and a goatee beard. So, a gesture in which he wanted to deprecate high art. But it's a beginning of a constant stream of ways in which the Mona Lisa is transformed and is used for commercial purposes as well.

The French artist Fernand Léger depicts the masterpiece with everyday objects, including a set of keys to show she has become a household name. We have the advertising industry, which you have the Mona Lisa hand cream, the Mona Lisa makeup. There seems to be no limit to what the enigmatic portrait of Lisa Giardini can sell. Adverts for corsets, bottled water, boiled sweets, chocolates, cigars, even laxatives and contraceptives are endorsed with her universally recognizable face. The painting is memorialized in songs by Nat King Cole,

Bob Dylan, Elton John, and Cole Porter. It appears countless times in novels, from romances to hard-boiled thrillers. And in children's stories, for the purposes of plot, it is often incorrectly depicted as being painted on canvas, so it can be rolled up and smuggled out of the Louvre. There are more than 50 Mona Lisa games, ranging from board games to pseudo-psychological tests. During the Second World War, the Mona Lisa is moved out of the Louvre for its safety. Later, in the 1960s, the painting takes on an ambassadorial role. The relations between the United States and France were not terribly good in the early 60s because de Gaulle, then president of France, wanted to have an independent foreign policy from the Americans.

renowned writer and intellectual, Malraux. And Malraux said, well, let's do something nice for the Americans for a change. Let's send the Mona Lisa to New York and to Washington. In the States, almost two million people queue for just a few seconds in front of the painting. Jackie Kennedy, the wife of the president, is photographed next to it. The pop artist, Andy Warhol, creates a silk screen work with multiple Mona Lisas called 30 Are Better Than One. The following decade, the Mona Lisa takes a similar trip to Japan, swinging by Moscow on the way back. But soon, other countries are requesting visits, and the curators of the Louvre put their foot down. It is just a 500-year-old piece of wood, after all, and relatively fragile. From now on, the Mona Lisa is to stay put.

Her fans must come to her. Some are more committed than others. In 1981, an entrepreneur sells his firm to work as a guard at the Louvre so he can see the painting every day. French performance artist Orlin even undergoes plastic surgery to emulate the Mona Lisa's unique appearance. Among artists, it becomes a common trick to recreate the portrait, replacing her face with that of another well-known figure. Marcel Duchamp did not realize when he put a mustache on the goatee beard that it would be the beginning of a continuous series of changes about the Mona Lisa. We've had even recently the Mona Lisa is pregnant, the Mona Lisa this, the Mona Lisa that. users of the Mona Lisa simply by putting the face of someone well-known, Stalin, Roosevelt,

more recently Putin, before that Blair, anyone who is well-known has been Mona Lizard. The fascination with Leonardo's masterpiece is unending, and the theories about her keep coming. Could it be that the woman in the portrait is pregnant, or suffering from Bell's palsy? Maybe she grinds her teeth. The perennial conversation about her keeps the stream of visitors flowing, but displaying something so famous to the general public comes with its own risks. If you want your Court of Honor of Fame, you attack something which is extremely well known. So you don't attack a minor painting in the Louvre. You go for the big one. Hugo Villegas, a 42-year-old Bolivian, threw a stone at the Mona Lisa and slightly damaged the painting.

and slightly damaged the painting. The following day, which was New Year's Eve, the story was carried by virtually every newspaper in the world. Now, this was the most serious attack, but it led to a super protection. Now the painting has a special super-rainforth glass. You can throw anything at it, and apparently you can even go there with a machine gun, and it won't do anything to the painting.

The painting is better protected than the President of the Republic. It's hardly surprising. Few would contest that it's the most famous painting in the world, but even the existence of a number one spot is unique. There's no comparable single work of literature or piece of music that entirely dominates.

Perhaps it's because it only takes a minute or two to look at a painting. You go to Paris, you have only a few days, you've got to do the Eiffel Tower, then you go to the Louvre, which has 6,000 paintings. The only one you probably have really heard of is the Mona Lisa. There are panels everywhere in the museum telling you where the Mona Lisa is. You go there, you have a quick look, you have your picture taken next to the Mona Lisa,

and you then go shopping. Still, there is no one simple reason why the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world. Why is it so famous? She's not even naked. There's no sex in the Mona Lisa. There's no violence. We're supposed to believe that sex and violence is what sells stuff in the modern age. The Mona Lisa's journey to fame is complex. A number of people have contributed to it. Leonardo da Vinci, who painted it. Lisa Gerardini, who sat for it. Francis I, who bought it. The writers of the 19th century, who immortalized the woman in the painting as a femme fatale, Vincenzo Perugia, who stole it. It is a masterpiece by an undisputed Renaissance genius.

But perhaps the Mona Lisa's place at the very top of the art world comes down to a series of coincidences, even a matter of luck. No wonder she is smiling. Next week on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of the real Robinson Crusoe. Abandoning people on an island is known as marooning and this wasn't too uncommon as a punishment it wasn't used very much but people knew about it and this was sort of a way to get somebody off your ship you're going to give them a very minimal amount of supplies so they could survive for maybe a couple of weeks but the idea is you get them off their ship without killing

them that way you're not going to be guilty of murder or you won't get in trouble. That's next time on Short History Health.