Mona Lisa?

"Where is the Mona Lisa?", that is the most asked question at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Every day there are thousands of visitors milling around in the corridors of the museum just to admire Mona Lisa's mysterious smile. The popularity of this painting has made the Louvre Museum immensely renowned all over the world.

An accidental visitor entering the room where the painting is kept might think that the reason for such a chaotic throng is the presence of a celebrity of the world of cinema or music. One of the rules in the museum provides that no more than thirty people at a time should be allowed to stand around a painting: in the case of the Mona Lisa, that rule is unfailingly disregarded. Tourists, who usually behave properly and are overawed by the place, before the Mona Lisa even ignore the prohibition of using flash: you might think that one of their main purposes of their going to Paris is to take a picture of the Mona Lisa, at the risk of defying the museum attendants.

No other painting has ever been given as much attention, no other painting excites as much admiration as the Mona Lisa. Even people who are not particularly interested in painting are able to identify the Mona Lisa at first sight and to catch some details, such as her eyes, her hands, her mouth...

From her container, protected by glass and body guards, with her serene, ironical aloofness, she dominates the visitors. The expression in her eye is more intense than ours, and we are subject to her attention more than she is subject to ours.

Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa between 1503 and 1504 to portray Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo. It is an oil painting on a poplar panel, and its size is smaller than commonly one might suppose: only 21 x 30 inches.

The Mona Lisa is not kept as an "ordinary" work of art: it is on display in a special container which is fixed to the wall and protected by two bullet-proof sheets of three-layer glass that are placed 10 inches from each other. Any routine maintenance operation concerning this particular painting can only be carried out during the closing day of the museum on Tuesdays. The Mona Lisa cannot be restored: since the XVI century no restorer has ever dared run the risk of damaging it.

The description above, which is inspired by Donald Sassoon's book: "Mona Lisa. The History of the World's Most Famous Painting", expresses perfectly what the Mona Lisa represents and helps us understand why that is the most famous painting of all time.

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