Some Lesser-Known Things About the Mona Lisa
Whenever I am in Paris, a visit to the Louvre Museum is always on my agenda. Not for Mona Lisa but for other precious relics of human civilisation that are housed in this complex. About Mona Lisa, a friend in Paris told me this :
"Had the Mona Lisa not been stolen from the Louvre in Paris on 21 August 1911, she would likely have remained a pleasing yet otherwise peripheral work amongst the museum’s thousands of other paintings. It was this act of theft that precipitated a global media sensation, and thereby transformed a comparatively little-known Renaissance panel into the world-renowned cultural icon that it is today."
Here are some more unknown facts about this painting that I came to know in Paris :
1. She probably had eyebrows and eyelashes*
Traces show up in early infrared scans. Centuries of cleaning wore them away.
2. Leonardo never gave it to the client.
He started it c.1503 for Francesco del Giocondo and kept it for 16 years, tweaking it until he died.
3. He carried it to France . When Leonardo moved to work for King Francis I, the painting came with him in his luggage.
4. The background doesn’t match. The left horizon is higher than the right. The two landscapes are from different places, which makes her look like she’s in a dream.
5. It’s tiny. Only 77 cm x 53 cm — about 30 x 21 inches. People always expect something huge.
6. Her dress is plain on purpose.No jewellery, simple dark dress and veil. For 1503, that was radical. Leonardo was painting psychology, not status.
7. There are earlier versions underneath. Scans show a bigger collar, different headdress, and hairpins that Leonardo painted over.
8. The "sfumato" smile trick. No hard outlines around the mouth. Stare directly, and it fades. Look at her eyes, and the smile appears in your peripheral vision.
9. She’s missing an edge. The panel was likely cut down a bit on all sides. Copies from the 1500s show columns on the sides that aren’t there now.
10. The bridge is real... maybe. It’s often identified as the Ponte Buriano near Arezzo, but Leonardo mixed real and imagined landscapes.
11. It wasn’t famous until it was stolen. In 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia took it from the Louvre. Two years of newspaper coverage made her a worldwide icon.
12. Picasso was questioned by police. Because of the theft. He and Apollinaire were suspects for a few days.
13. It survived an acid attack and a rock. In 1956, someone threw acid, then a rock. The glass installed afterwards saved her. In 2009, someone threw a teacup too.
14. Napoleon hung it in his bedroom. After Leonardo died, Francis I bought it. It later entered the royal collection and ended up with Napoleon.
15. She has her own room now. The Louvre’s Salle des États was redesigned for her. Bulletproof glass, climate control, and crowd barriers.
16. "Price" : what was it bought for? King Francis I bought it from Leonardo’s heirs around 1518-1519 for about 4,000 gold écus. In today’s terms, estimates put that at roughly $50-$100 million, but there was no "market sale" like modern art.
17. Insurance value: officially "priceless": The Louvre does not insure the Mona Lisa. French national treasures are covered by the state. For its internal valuation, the Louvre has cited figures around $860 million to $1 billion+ in recent years.
18. If it were insured today! Art insurers estimate a premium would be $2-$5 million per year at that valuation, but no company would actually underwrite it. The risk is too big.
19. Most valuable painting ever sold (for comparison): Salvator Mundi went for $450.3 million in 2017. Mona Lisa would almost certainly beat that at auction, which is why the $1B+ figure gets used.
20. She earns the Louvre money instead: About 10 million people visit the Louvre each year. And 80% come mainly to see her. She’s essentially a billion-dollar tourist engine.
21. Restoration costs are huge but hidden. Major cleanings and climate control run into millions over decades. The 2004-2005 restoration alone took months and was done by Louvre specialists at state expense.
I visited the Louvre twice, but couldn’t stay near the Mona Lisa for more than 20 minutes. The crowd was always thick, the glass reflected everything, and other important artefacts kept pulling me away. The Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo, the Egyptian rooms, The Pastoral Concert, Athena, Liberty Leading the People, the raft of Medusa and many more were waiting for me.
You go for Mona Lisa, and the whole museum answers back. And that’s how it felt. A brief stay, a brief look, and I moved on like the gentle morning breeze, always in a hurry, always fleeting .And that’s how it felt.
"Hamein tha kaam bahut, ruuk sakay na pal do pal,
Guzar gaye teray kooche se hum saba ki tarah"...(Jagan Nath Azad)
"We had so much to do, we couldn’t even stop for a moment or two,
We passed by your street like the morning breeze; gentle and fleeting."
( Avtar Mota )
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.
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