How Did the Mona Lisa Get So Popular?

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is a technical masterpiece, but the portrait wasn't famous until centuries after its creation. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/artwork/mona-lisa.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Bobabam here. You know the Mona Lisa.
You've seen her image countless times, But how did she
come to be considered such a masterpiece? Art is, after
all a subjective experience, Yet the world is seemingly unanimously

(00:23):
obsessed with the Mona Lisa. So why is she's such
a big deal? The first things first, Yes, Mona Lisa
was a real person, and while scholars have debated who
that person was for centuries, and most believed the seated
subject of Leonardo da Vinci's famous work was the Mona
or Madam Lisa Garardini del Giocondo, also known as Logia Conda.

(00:47):
This Florentine lady's wealthy silk merchant husband may have commissioned
the portrait to celebrate the impending birth of their child,
but for some unexplained reason, the Giocondo family never actually
came into possession of the painting. The pregnancy theory does
add up, though, if you believe scholars who speculate that
the subjects sli smile and loose clothing are nod to

(01:08):
motherhood on the horizon, and most historians agree that da
Vinci started the painting around fifteen o three and continued
to work on it for about four years. Beauty may
be in the eye of the beholder, but da Vinci's
painting includes some revolutionary techniques that make it technically impressive.
The style of the painting in itself is the most

(01:30):
famous example of da Vinci's signatures fumato method, which blends
colors and tones in a soft, shaded way without the
hard lines or borders of fu Mare is an Italian
word for shading off or fading out, and fu mare
means smoke. Da Vinci incorporated another pioneering technique into his creation,

(01:51):
the integration of an imaginary landscape and the use of
aerial perspective. Mona Lisa is seated in an open space
with decided non specific mountains, bridges, and winding paths behind
her in the distance. This dreamy landscape is a departure
from the realistic backgrounds that artists of the time painted
into their portraits, and many have associated those serene, natural

(02:13):
elements and the subject's calm expression with a greater commentary
on the human connection to nature. The Mona Lisa is
also one of the earliest examples of an Italian portrait
portraying a subject at half length. That is, the arms
and hands are displayed, but the frame extends below them,
and she's sitting in a chair. And of course there's

(02:36):
that iconic, if slightly creepy characteristic of Mona Lisa's eyes
seemingly following the viewer wherever they go. This weirdly intimate
attribute is a result of da Vinci's mastery of shadows
and light, and while he wasn't the first one to
implement the technique, many people refer to the illusion as
the Mona Lisa effect. While the Mona Lisa definitely has

(02:59):
a lot going on for her in the way of
artistic skill, level, thematic complexity, and unique presentation, she definitely
developed the majority of her fan following after an infamous
incident at the Louver on August one of nineteen eleven,
three young Italian handyman slipped out of the side entrance
of the famous French museum with the Mona Lisa in tow.

(03:21):
The fact that it took twenty six hours for anyone
to notice she was missing perhaps speaks to the low
level of fame that the painting had up until that point.
Even though da Vinci had created the piece in the
early fifteen hundreds, critics didn't really take notice until the
eighteen sixties, and even then the positive accolades were few
and far between and exclusively within the art world itself.

(03:46):
But once the portrait went missing, the world took notice
in a major way. Newspapers all over the world printed
headlines about its disappearance, and people started concocting all kinds
of conspiracy theories about the likely robbers. America and tycoon
JP Morgan and famed artist Pablo Picasso were both considered suspects.
The Louver shut down for a week, and when it

(04:08):
reopened its doors, scores of people flocked the museum to
see the mark of shame, that is, the empty spot
on the wall for themselves. It took twenty eight months
for the lead thief to attempt a resale of this
stolen merchandise, and an art gallery owner quickly confirmed the
item's authenticity with a glance at the stamp on the back.

(04:29):
The dealer said he'd make sure the seller got a
reward and instead sent the police after him. The thief
pled guilty and served eight months in prison, and while
the painting was returned to its rightful home. People around
the world continued to chatter about its disappearance. Over time,
they just kept chattering, and these days Mona Lisa is
one of the most famous women in the world. Of course,

(04:52):
everyone has haters, including her. In ninety six, a Louver
visitor through acid at her, and another person helped at
her with a rock as she was attacked with spray
paint in and a rogue coffee cup in two thousand nine,
but thankfully she had already been protected by bulletproof glass
by the time those two incidents took place. In May

(05:13):
of two she was smeared with cake by a climate
change protester. However, the bulletproof glass prevented any lasting damage.
Today's episode is based on the article why is the
world so captivated by the Mona Lisa on how stuff
Works dot Com written by Michelle Konstantinovski. Brain Stuff is

(05:35):
production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff
Works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four
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