The Mona Lisa Mystery | Why is it World's Most Famous Painting?
Hello, friends!
On 21st August 1911, it was a Monday morning in the French capital, Paris. It was quite bustling. People were going to work in their offices when suddenly, three men came out of the Louvre museum. The three had spent the previous night in the museum. And now, they were carrying an important property of the Louvre Museum that was hidden in a blanket while they tried to escape. They went to a nearby railway station caught the train at 8.45 in the morning and disappeared. The whole world was unaware of the fact that they had stolen a painting. Not an insignificant painting. The world's most famous painting. The Mona Lisa. Today, the value of this painting is close to $1 billion. What is the reason behind this? What are the secrets hidden in the Mona Lisa? Why is this the most famous painting in the world? Let's understand the mystery of the Mona Lisa in today's video.
Mona Lisa was painted in 1503 by an Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. And this man was so amazing, that you won't even believe it. Not only was he a painter, but also an engineer, scientist, sculptor, architect, and theorist. He knew so many subjects, be it painting, cartography, astronomy, anatomy, botany, hydrology, geology, optics, or even paleontology. An entire video can be made on his life. So, without talking about him too much, let's get to Mona Lisa, which was his most famous painting.
But who was this person in the painting? People have always been curious about the identity of the woman in the painting. The first revelation about this was made by an Italian artist named Giorgio Vasari, who wrote the autobiography of Leonardo da Vinci in 1550. According to Vasari, this woman was Lisa Gherardini. She was married to a silk trader who lived in Florence, Francesco Giocondo. He believed that Francesco had commissioned this painting of his wife, and that's the origin of the names of this painting.
The first name that we all know, Mona Lisa, derived from Madonna Lisa. Traditionally, in Italian, the word Madonna was used to mean Madam. So, Madonna Lisa meant Madam Lisa. The word Madonna was later shortened to Monna. Monna with a double N. When this was written in English, an N was dropped, and Monna became Mona. So Mona Lisa means Madam Lisa or Lady Lisa. And then comes Mona Lisa's other name, which is La Gioconda.
After her marriage, Lisa Gherardini became Lisa Giocondo. Interestingly, in Italian, Giocondo means light-hearted or cheerful. Meaning, bright and joyful. And today, Mona Lisa is very famous for her smile. So that's where it got its name, La Gioconda. In French, the word Giocondo is written with a J, like this, Joconde. So that's why when you go to the Louvre Museum in Paris and see the painting of Mona Lisa, in French, it would be identified as La Joconde.
Now, the interesting thing is that in 1550, despite this revelation, people were not ready to believe that Vasari's narrative was correct. Many theories started to emerge about this woman being someone else. Some people said that she was Leonardo da Vinci's mother. Some said that this was a painting of a queen from the Italian aristocracy. The most interesting theory was that in this painting, da Vinci painted himself. This painting is not of a woman, but a self-portrait of Da Vinci.
This theory was promoted by artist Lilian Schwartz in an article in 1987. She used digital tools to try to show similarities between Leonardo Da Vinci's face and Mona Lisa's image. With this logic, any two faces can be seen as similar by placing them on top of each other. But today, we can say with a lot of certainty that the woman painted here is indeed Lisa Giocondo. A professor living in Florence researched this for 25 years and found the archives and in 2004, he discovered clear evidence to prove this fact. He also found that the da Vinci family had a close relationship with Francesco Giocondo's family. He also found a record that Lisa's marriage was registered on 5th March 1495 when Lisa was 16 years old and Francesco was around 30 years old. He found that Leonardo da Vinci's father and Lisa's husband knew each other very well. And it's possible that this painting was commissioned not by Lisa's husband, but by Leonardo's father. Pallanti says that when the Mona Lisa was painted, Lisa was 24 years old.
And that there might have been two reasons for painting this. The first reason is that in 1503, Francesco and Lisa bought their home, and the second reason is that in December 1502, their second son was born. The second reason seems more probable because three years before this, in 1499, Lisa lost her daughter. If you look at this painting closely, you will see a veil over Lisa's hair. Many people call it a mourning veil. It is a veil that is worn when someone in the family has passed away.
Now, one question arises here: if Da Vinci was Italian and the Mona Lisa was Italian, then why is this painting in France today? Well, the thing about this is that in the year 1516, the king of France, King Francis I, invited Leonardo da Vinci to live in France. And so, da Vinci moved from Italy to France. And took with him the Mona Lisa. Historical records aren't clear about this, but it's believed that da Vinci hadn't completed the painting yet. 15 years after starting the painting, he was still working on this painting, trying to modify it and make it better.
Meanwhile, in the year 1519, Leonardo da Vinci passed away during his stay in the French palace. The king kept this painting as a part of his Royal collection. About 150 years later, in 1797, when the French Revolution happened, this painting was taken out of the palace and handed over to the Louvre Museum. I have made a separate video on the French Revolution in case you haven't seen it yet, its link is in the description.
The interesting thing is that this is the reason why the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911. I had talked about this at the beginning of the video. The mastermind of this theft was Vincenzo Peruggia. He stole this painting with his two friends. He was an Italian Nationalist. He believed that this painting belonged to Italy, not to France. And so after stealing it, they took it to Italy. Stealing such a famous painting was a risky job, especially when the value of the painting was millions of dollars. So, Vincenzo wouldn't have felt safe after this theft.