I just watched a doc that mentioned Paris as the city of the Mona Lisa and wondered what is it that makes that painting so special after all these years. Btw, im in Asia and Ive seen the painting countless times through references. I cant remember the first time I heard/saw the painting but it must’ve been when I was a toddler. How can an image get so famous?
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The Mona Lisa’s fame has very little to do with the quality of the painting, there are very few art historians that would regard it as even Leonardo da Vinci’s best painting.
Most of its fame comes from how it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris on August 21, 1911, by an Italian handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia. Peruggia had worked at the Louvre and was familiar with the museum’s operations. He hid inside the museum overnight and, dressed in a white smock like the museum staff, was able to remove the painting early in the morning before the museum opened to the public. He took off the protective case and frame and then walked out with the painting hidden under his clothing.
Due to the telegraph and the emergence of the radio, this became one of the world’s first global news stories making the name Mona Lisa synonymous with fine art and leading to it being the most reparduced image in the world.
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