NARRATOR: Jay-Z and
Beyonce posed with her.
Kardashians posed with her.
So did Tony Danza,
Cara Delevingne, even
Richard Simmons.
Nat King Cole sang about
her; so did will.i.am.
She was famously stolen in 1911.
Marcel Duchamp
parodied her in 1919.
Someone more recently
made a towel out of her.
But who is she?
Why, after centuries, do we
continue to flock to her?
Let's better know the Mona Lisa.
Leonardo da Vinci-- yep, the
original Renaissance man,
who painted "The Last
Supper" and was also
an inventor, architect,
engineer, and scientist--
began the portrait in 1533,
while living in Florence.
It was the height of
the Italian Renaissance,
when a mounting interest in
humanism, as well as a growing
merchant class with
disposable income,
had popularized
portrait-painting.
We call it the "Mona
Lisa," "Mona" being
short for "Madonna," or
"lady," and his subject
is almost definitely Lisa del
Giocondo, a Florentine who
married a cloth merchant
at the age of 15
and would have been about
24 when it was painted.
Italians call the painting "La
Gioconda," the feminine form
of her married name.
And the French likewise
call it "La Joconde,"
which conveniently invokes
the Latin "jocundus"
and its derivatives, meaning
"pleasant" or "agreeable."
Lisa's husband,
Francesco, likely
commissioned the portrait on
the occasion of their moving
into a new home, or
possibly after the birth
of one of their children.
But the portrait never
actually got to them.
Francesco might not
have paid for it,
or Leonardo could have
put off finishing it
for a more important commission.
But the painting remained
in the artist's possession
until his death
in 1519, after he
had joined the royal court of
King Francois I. From there,
the painting became the
property of the king.
And, after a stay at
Versailles, it eventually
made its way to the Louvre,
in the late 18th century.
There it has remained-- except
when this guy walked it out
of the museum, under his
shirt, hid it for two years,
and then tried to
return the painting
to an Italian museum which he
felt was its rightful home.
Then it was back to the Louvre,
until World War II came along,
and it was shuffled around
France for safekeeping,
sometimes even on a
stretcher in an ambulance.
It went from a chateau
in the Loire valley,
to an abbey in the
south of France,
to museums farther south,
until it could finally
be returned to Paris
after the end of the war.
While many portraits of
the time were more closely
cropped and painted
in profile, Lisa
is oriented more frontally
and shown in half length.
Her hands are included, with
her right resting delicately
over top the left.
And she's dressed
fairly unremarkably--
not trying to show off
with the latest trends.
She's seated in a chair, in a
loggia, or an open-air room,
which looks out
over a landscape.
It was made with oil paint on
wood panel, using a technique
Leonardo liked
called "sfumato"--
what a great word!
Say it with me-- "sfumato"--
which is the kind
of smudgy, smoky
haziness you see, especially
around her eyes and mouth.
It contributes to the
softness and realness of Lisa
but also gives an
atmospheric effect
that is almost otherworldly.
He used the same effect
in some biblical scenes.
You see it here in the shading
around the Virgin Mary's neck.
But our decidedly
secular subject, Lisa,
while rendered hazily, is
looking directly out at us--
and with her famous
smile, if that's what
you call this expression.
In 2005, researchers
ran the image
through emotion-recognition
software, which rated features
like curvature around the lips
and crinkles around the eyes,
finding the expression to
be 83% happy, 9% disgusted,
6% fearful, 2% angry, less than
1% neutral, and 0% surprised.
So it's a smile, but
it's not an empty smile.
There's a knowingness to it--
a smile in spite of everything,
as if she knows she's
caught in this painting,
in her own turbulent time,
looking out at us, whoever
we are, in our turbulent time.
Which is perhaps what makes
it so indelible an image.
It has always been one of
the treasures of the Louvre
collection, but it wasn't
until after its 1911 theft
that it reached superstardom.
In the two days after
it was returned,
more than 100,000
people came to see it.
And they really haven't
stopped since then,
with millions meeting
her gaze each year.
Many copies of the
painting exist,
and much debate about
who painted them.
Researchers recently found
that one version, at the Prado,
was probably painted
by an artist sitting
right next to Leonardo,
following his actions, stroke
by stroke.
But even that one,
while striking,
doesn't capture the mystery
and majesty of the original.
There are nude Mona Lisas
and, of course, many plays
on the original, with
artists from Botero,
who painted a Lisa at
age 12 and as an adult,
and Warhol, who
drew the connection
between this original celebrity
and the subjects of more
recent paparazzi.
It doesn't appear that our
attention to this painting
is waning.
In fact, it might even be
rising, as the internet offers
us countless reproductions,
reinterpretations,
merchandisfications,
and bastardisations.
Which raises the question
of whether, at this point,
the "Mona Lisa" is
famous primarily
because it's a masterpiece
or famous primarily
because it's famous.
It may be that our
identification with Lisa
is more intense than
ever, as we see around us
more and more
images of ourselves
looking out, staring into
the eyes of unknown millions.
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