Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?

About 20,000 visitors a day. Are we talking about the channel of a influencers? No, we mean the Gioconda, to the famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo daVinci. It is estimated that this is the number of people who, on average, parade in a single day in front of this table of small dimensions, a record hardly surpassed by any other work of art in the world.

What is it about this painting that arouses so much interest? What makes the Mona Lisa trending topic for museum visitors? In this article we explain the reason the Mona Lisa is so famous.

Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?

For most critics, it is far from da Vinci's masterpiece. And not because of its small size (77 x 53 cm), but because the Florentine master has works of a greater artistic caliber in his artistic corpus. For example, and without leaving the Louvre, we have the famous Virgin of the Rocks, executed between 1483 and 1486. The one kept in the Louvre is considered the first of the copies (the second is in the National Gallery in London), made for a chapel in the church of San Francesco in Milan.

The composition, the execution of the figures and the rocky landscape in the background, almost unreal, make this panel a masterpiece..

Equally impressive is the table The Virgin, Saint Anne and Child, painted by da Vinci in 1503. The triangle drawn by the three figures, subtly balanced by the movement of the mother (who tries to separate the son from the lamb, symbol sacrifice), together with the delicate representation of the landscape in the background, indicate that we are before one of the great works of the painter Florentine.

But why, then, when we go to the Louvre, do we find the Mona Lisa room crowded? Why is this small table the only work in the museum that has catenaries to manage the flow of visitors? What makes the Mona Lisa a "unique" work?

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A very famous robbery

To understand it, we have to go back in time and go back to the month of August 1911. If we had been able to visit the room where the Gioconda was exhibited that year, we would have been able to notice that the influx of visitors was not even close to the current one. Yes, it is true that at the beginning of the 20th century, globalization had just begun, and there were, of course, networks and the Internet. But this is not the cause of the absence of people before the Mona Lisa. Plain and simple, people did not consider the Mona Lisa a special painting.

But it happened that, on August 22, 1911, the Louvre workers realized that the Gioconda was not in its place. It had been stolen. A thorough investigation was soon launched, and newspapers of the time tried almost feverishly to reconstruct the events. Much later it was learned that, the day before, the thief, disguised as a worker, had taken down the painting and placed it calmly under his arm. Then, without losing his cool, he hid it in her robe and walked her out of the museum.

The enormous media coverage that was given to the robbery had a lot to do with the fame that the Mona Lisa was acquiring month after month.. It appeared in the newspapers, on billboards, on the wrapper of candies and chocolates. Da Vinci's painting had gone from being an almost anonymous work among the thousands that the Louvre treasured to being a true celebrity. People, intoxicated by publicity and news on the subject, asked themselves, over and over again: And… where is the Mona Lisa?

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Two long years of advertising

Even Picasso himself and his colleague Guillaume Apollinaire were accused of involvement in the robbery. Newspapers made up one story after another, all false and unsubstantiated, just to keep readers' attention.. One of the most famous was the lie that Leonardo had fallen in love with the woman represented and that the story of the Mona Lisa was a beautiful love story. Anyway; the truth had become a true novel and those who spoke of it sold more copies than the publishers of serial books. And meanwhile, the Mona Lisa kept missing.

Two long years passed in this way. In 1913, someone contacted an antiquities dealer and the curator of the Uffizi in Florence. He wanted to sell them a piece of art that he was sure would interest them. The appointment, in a small hotel in Florence. The seller's name, Vincenzo Peruggia, a humble character who had worked at the Louvre before.

The two mentioned men soon realized that the work of art that Peruggia wanted to sell them was the real Mona Lisa. The discovery puzzled them, since, In 1913, even the Louvre itself had given up hope of finding its missing maid.. Immediately, the men called the police; Peruggia was arrested, and the Mona Lisa, of course, returned to Paris.

Not content with the end of the bizarre event, the media continued feeding the story for a few more years. In 1915, a French newspaper published what they claimed was the thief's confession.

The article claimed that Peruggia had stolen the work because he wanted to return it to Italy, the place where it "come" and to which it "belonged." Apparently, he was convinced that Napoleon had stolen the work as it passed through the Italian peninsula. What the thief did not know was that da Vinci had taken the Gioconda with him when he moved to France, and that King Francis I had acquired it shortly after. No theft, no looting. Just a poor bastard who had nurtured patriotic dreams.

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The birth of a myth

While the Mona Lisa was missing, the flow of visitors who stopped in his room to contemplate the empty space he had left was increasing considerably. Upon his return, hysteria broke out. Everyone wanted to see with their own eyes the little work that had caused so much controversy. They all went to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa.

Since then, his fame has only grown. Perhaps to justify so much fuss, some have wanted to see in it the "masterpiece" of da Vinci, the zenith of his artistic creation. The fact that the painter took this version of the Gioconda with him to France seemed to corroborate the magnitude of the work; at least, it was plausible to think that the artist held the panel in high regard. All this, of course, continued to feed legends about the identity of the woman portrayed, her relationship with Leonardo and the reason for her "strange smile".

A smile that, on the other hand, is not at all enigmatic. There is nothing in the face of the Mona Lisa that makes us think of an unusual creation; nor does the landscape in the background or the rest of the composition show any outstanding characteristics that make it stand out from the rest of Leonardo's works. We have, more than likely, a simple idealization motivated by sudden fame.

the other Gioconda

What perhaps many of the visitors who flock to photograph (not contemplate) the Mona Lisa at the Louvre do not know is that there is another Mona Lisa, a "twin" that most of gioconda-maniacs unknown. This other version is in the Museo del Prado, in Madrid, and experts maintain that it also came from Leonardo's workshop, possibly from the brush of someone very close to the painter.

The Mona Lisa del Prado is, according to specialists, the earliest copy of the work. The composition is identical, as is the creative process (it contains the same corrections as its namesake). French), which suggests that, indeed, they were painted at the same time and in parallel in the same workshop.

The truly curious thing is that, if you go to the Prado, you will be able to see that the Mona Lisa in Madrid does not have the avalanche of visitors that its "twin" in the Louvre has. We have already commented that possibly the vast majority of those who visit the Parisian museum are unaware of the existence of the “Spanish” Mona Lisa. In addition, the version of the Prado never suffered theft or the tremendous media coverage that his partner did experience.