Mona Lisa to Spread Her Smile across the World

Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa is all set to embark on a world tour after it has spent nearly all of the past 500 years in Paris. The government has recently announced the rare tour of Mona Lisa, on a special mission to project French soft power around the world.

The Mona Lisa painting, whose enigmatic smile has captivated artists and admirers, draws millions of people to the famed Louvre in Paris where it is displayed each year and has rarely ventured outside the museum’s walls, citing concerns over the fragility and security of the painting is all set to come out and meet its lover across the world.

The culture minister, Françoise Nyssen, said that she was “seriously considering” requests from art lover across the world to lent the world’s most famous painting for temporary, which could include it being shown outside France.

If all plans goes well then the La Gioconda (another name of Mona Lisa), the wife of Francesco del Gioconda would venture out of the Louvre for the first time since 1974, when she toured museums in Moscow and Tokyo.

Mona Lisa also visited US in the year 1963, when the then First Lady Jackie Kennedy requested French President de Gaulle to lend the painting to the National Gallery in Washington and the Big Apple’s Metropolitan Museum.

While travelling to United States of America, it was shipped in a fire proof, watertight container and was kept in a temperature controlled. For security reasons it was under constant watch by security guards and museum officials. US Coast Guard accompanied the transatlantic liner carrying it as the painting entered New York harbour.

The painting was once stolen from the Louvre in 1911, resurfacing two years later in Florence. In 2013, the Louvre refused a request of a loan of the Mona Lisa from the city of Florence, where Leonardo is believed to have started the work. It was also affected when a man threw acid on it during an exhibition in a South France Museum in the year 1956.

Officials and curators have been therefore reluctant to allow Mona Lisa to be removed from the safe confines of the Paris museum due to concerns over the fragility and security of the painting. Some argue that the painting, on a thin poplar wood panel, is too fragile to move.

But Cultural Minister Nyssen dismissed those worries, citing President Emmanuel Macron’s offer to loan the 11th century Bayeux tapestry that depicts the Norman conquest to Britain in 2022.

Mona Lisa’s first stopover after it came out of Louvre is may be going to be Northern French city of Lens, as the mayor of Lens has already shown his interest in housing Mona Lisa. An extension of the Louvre has been located in Lens since 2012.

The idea behind the tour of Mona Lisa or lending of the painting for exhibition internationally is part of President Macron’s vision to use the country’s huge stock of art treasures to project French soft power around the world.

In Louvre, Mona Lisa has occupied a special room, displayed behind bulletproof glass for the past decade. The work of art has been in France since Leonardo finished the painting, which he started in Florence, while on a long stay at the invitation of King François I in 1516. After the artist’s death in 1519, the king bought the painting and exhibited it at the Château de Fontainebleau, where it remained until Louis XIV took it to his new palace in Versailles a century later.

Napoleon Bonaparte also borrowed the painting, to hang in his bedroom in the Tuileries Palace for four years. In 1804 it went on display in the Louvre’s Grande Galerie. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, it was moved from the Louvre to the naval port of Brest, in Brittany. It went missing for two years after it was stolen in 1911. A former employee was caught trying to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

It was briefly put on display there and in Rome before it was returned to the Louvre. Memories of the episode may have encouraged the Louvre to refuse a request from Florence in 2013 to lend the Mona Lisa for an exhibition. Florentines believe that the city is the paintings real home.

During the 1940-44 Nazi occupation, the painting, along with hundreds of other works in the Louvre was hidden from the Nazis first inside the occupied zone and then the non-occupied zone.

Mona Lisa has been witness to some of the historic moments of the world, which she has seen all with her smiling face. This time also, as it is all set to be out to meet her fans, lovers and followers across the world with the same smiles with a message of love for everyone.