How old is the mona lisa

How the Mona Lisa Became Famous

The Mona Lisa may not have found its way to the del Giocondo home, but people knew it existed, and it made an impact.

Leonardo carried the painting with him for 14 years, first from Florence to Milan, then to Rome, and finally, over the Alps to his final home in France. His followers and students started making copies of the piece during his lifetime — Raphael even visited Leonardo’s workshop and based portraits of his own on the piece.

The portrait eventually ended up in the collection of Leonardo’s last patron, King Francis the First of France. In 1804, it was installed in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. As time went on, however, the original attraction to the painting began to fade.

Then, on the morning of August 21st, 1911, a 30-year-old Italian handyman took the Mona Lisa from her frame, tucked the panel under his smock and walked out of the Louvre. It was a Monday, and the museum was closed for the day – the theft went unnoticed for about 24 hours. The press pounced on every detail of the story. The missing Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda (or La Joconde in French), was on the front page of every newspaper. For the next two years, the story of her theft was a cultural sensation, garnering worldwide attention.

In 1913, the thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, was finally caught and the Mona Lisa was recovered when he tried to sell it to an antiques dealer in Florence.

Once again, the media responded in a frenzy. Was the thief a dedicated art lover or a passionate nationalist? Why was the Mona Lisa considered so valuable? These questions became an invitation to dig deeper, transforming the Mona Lisa from a passive object into a site of intellectual inquiry.

After the theft, protests and clever parodies kept the Mona Lisa’s celebrity alive. In 1919, the painter Marcel Duchamp took a reproduction and drew a mustache and goatee across the face of the Mona Lisa. In the 1950s, Nat King Cole released a love ballad dedicated to her smile. The infamous pop artist Andy Warhol brought the Mona Lisa into the 1960s through colorful screen prints. And that was only the tip of the iceberg.