Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?
It's not just her smile, right?
Hi! Sorry for the brief newsletter hiatus. I’m sure my millions of readers have been constantly refreshing their inboxes unable to focus on anything else, but fear not. I’m back. A brief explanation: much to the chagrin of my U.S. teacher friends, my school just had a three-week spring break. I spent the time doing some traveling, and that meant I wasn’t writing. It was a blast, and for the next few weeks, I’ll write about where I went. First up: one thing I learned in Paris.
Let’s talk about the Mona Lisa
The Mona Lisa is strange.
Hear me out: I know she was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. And yes, she’s the crown jewel of the Louvre. And, of course, she has that smile. But, still, isn’t it a little odd how famous she is? Think about it:
The Director of the Louvre recently estimated that about 80% of all museum visitors come to the museum just to see the Mona Lisa. 80%!
These visitors love the painting so much that they often write love letters addressed to Mona Lisa herself. She receives so many of them that the Louvre has put up a special mailbox just for her in the museum.
At least one person committed suicide because of his obsession with her. In 1852, an aspiring French artist named Luc Maspero took his own life with a note saying, “For years, I have grappled desperately with her smile. I prefer to die.”
Just about anything you can imagine can be bought as Mona-Lisa-themed, from common things like t-shirts and socks to less common things like Chinese beans and succulent plant holders.
She wasn’t just da Vinci’s muse: Lyrics.com counts “Mona Lisa” being mentioned in a song 4,992 times. 4,992!
Even for a painting as good as the Mona Lisa, this isn’t normal. Why is she so much more famous than just about every other painting in the world? Well, it turns out it’s not just her grin. Let me tell you about the time the Mona Lisa was stolen.
The Mona Lisa Heist of 1911
From the 1500s to the early 1900s, the Mona Lisa was art-world famous, but not world-wide famous. da Vinci finished working on her in 1519, and every critic for 500 years has sung her praises. My personal favorite: influential 19th-century critic Walter Pater who said the Mona Lisa embodied both “the animalism of Greece” and “the lust of Rome.” But it wasn’t just critics. Napoleon Bonaparte himself hung the portrait in his bedroom. That being said, though, as one art historian put it, "The 'Mona Lisa' wasn't even the most famous painting in its gallery, let alone in the Louvre.”
But this all changed on one summer night in 1911. On that fateful evening, former Louvre worker Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa from right off the wall. At first, it took the Louvre a full 28 hours to notice, but as soon as they did the media went into uproar. This viral news coverage of the heist instantly made her a household name. Newspapers all over the world covered the theft for two years until the Mona Lisa was recovered. The gossip was juicy too: both J.P. Morgan and Pablo Picasso were suspects. Picasso was even interrogated! As Vox put it, it was like “a two-year ad campaign.”1
Finally, in 1913, the police found the painting and arrested Peruggia. The next day, the Mona Lisa’s smile appeared on the front page of newspapers across the world, and finally readers could see the stolen painting they’d spent two years reading about. Before the heist she was only famous within the art world, but this reveal catapulted her into the mega-celebrity status she still enjoys today.
So there you have it. The Mona Lisa was always renowned. But Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar don’t write a song about you unless there’s a little drama.
It’s funny, though -- all of us know she’s famous even if not everyone knows the story why. How interesting that her fame endures even if we forget the cause.2
It gets better: people mourned the loss of the painting by streaming into the Louvre to see the empty hooks and leave notes at the base. The outpouring of grief was so extreme that one article notes that when Princess Diana died in 1997, the New York Times said the outpouring of grief was similar to that of when the Mona Lisa was stolen. I couldn't find the NY Times article to confirm this since it wasn't an online paper back then, so that's why I had to put this in a footnote.
One last thing about the thief, Vincenzo Peruggia. He might have been more famous today if not for some interesting historical timing. He was imprisoned for 8 months in 1913 and 1914 before his trial, and when he finally appeared in court it was set to be front page news once again. But then, a few days after his trial, the unthinkable happened: World War I broke out. Suddenly, the author Dorothy Hoober says, “This seemed like a very small story.” Maybe he’d be better remembered today if not for Archduke Franz Ferdinand.