The name "Mona Lisa" probably means something to you... it´s the most famous painting in the world after all!
One director of the Louvre (the museum where Mona Lisa is) even admitted:
"(...) 80 percent of the people only want to see the Mona Lisa."
- Henri Loyrette, Director of Louvre (Source)
But why is the Mona Lisa that special? Or that famous? Is there something that we just don´t get? Some years ago a decided to dig this mystery up... this is what I found.
Has an art student, I always heard these crazy theories about the painting.
"The painting is famous because she seems to be looking at you from any point you are looking at it! IT´S AMAZING!" or "It´s famous because her smile is so enigmatic... it puzzles the soul of everyone that sees it..." or even "Mona Lisa was a revolucion for it´s time because of the perspective of the subject and the light and blablabla boring boring boring..."
I´m just gonna say that some of this is purelly made up, and other stuff actually checks out to be true... but none of those reasons is the actual reason why Mona Lisa is so famous!
Actually saw Mona Lisa in Louvre last and the thing where she keeps looking at you from every point of the room... ...I didn´t see it, to me doens´t check out... but I guess your mind can see what ever you want, specially when you are trying to understand things that you don´t... the perspective light boring part thing turns out to be true...
Nevertheless, the real reason Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world... it´s because it´s a MEME! I dare say, the longest running meme in history... probably... and probably the most glamorous and expensive one...
Hmmm... Mona Lisa is a meme?! Hmm... I seen my fair share of memes, and Mona girl doens´t seem like one...
Ok... it all started around the year 1873, when a writter named Walter Pater feel in obsolete obsession with the painting...
He was so insanally in love that he included her on his book The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry.
Be aware that Mona Lisa at the time was not famous, at all, it was just another painting. But Walter Pater wrote:
She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern philosophy has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea.
Walter Pater in his book The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (Source)
Son... are you okay? it´s just a girl sitting in a chair? The book was also written 300 years after Leonardo Da Vinci painted Mona Lisa, so nobody kind of not heard about this painting for 300 years!
Because of this, Mona Lisa became a little bit famous, at least in the art world.
You see, at the time people used to love this kind of stuff. Even though, The Last Super was the most popular Da Vinci´s painting at the time, Mona Lisa gave writters and other artists a way to express them selfs. Because it wans´t known, and because it was so "enigmatic"... in way, Mona Lisa was a painting artists could littelly paint what ever meaning they wiched to... kind of what happens today I guess...
But like has said, Mona Lisa was art world famous, not pop culture art icon famous, and it quickly was some what forgotten by the general public.
Until in 1911... when Mona Lisa... was stolen!
Vincenzo Peruggia worked at the Louvre and one he decided... "Would´t it be cool if I just took the painting of the wall and take it home?"... ... and so he did it!
It even took a all day for the Louvre directors to notice, and at the time there weren´t any cameras to record what happened so... yeap, he just picked up and brang it home!
Mona Lisa was not found for two years, and in those years the media kind of to took the story to a all new level!
They kept saying that it was her smile that drove the theif insane, that ancient writters were right about her, that it was the greatest painting ever and propaganda nonsence like that. And because people couldn´t just google Mona Lisa and see what was all this about... the media succceded and Mona Lisa got viral!
Hundreds of people went to the Louvre just to see an empty wall!
After 2 years, Vincenzo Peruggia was caught, and Mona Lisa was retreived. At this time, the Mona Lisa was world wide famous! And everyone wanted to see it!
It happered in political speeches, parodies, and everyone to this day is trying to understand what is all the fuss?
To this day, Mona Lisa is the one the central points of some theories. It keeps looking at you/It´s part of the Illuminati!/It´s just sooooooooo mysterious! when in fact, Mona Lisa is not a painting. It´s what ever you want her to be. It´s a blank face where you can paint all the meaning that you want.
In other words: a meme. But that ins´t bad, it ins´t bad at all.
Sure it ins´t the most interesting painting ever, but art is valuable because it has meaning in it, and besides Mona Lisa I don´t know of any painting that let´s you paint meaning all over it.
If that´s not art... what is?
thanks for reading :)
