COVE

In 1503, Leonardo da Vinci was given a commission to create a portrait of Francesco del Giocondo's wife, Lisa Gherardini. He began work this year, and continued working on it until his death in 1519. It is believed that an assitant also painted the Mona Lisa del Prado in conjunction with the original, copying the original painting. 

On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre. The ensuing media frenzy was unparalleled for any sort of art theft, and the hysteria bred all sorts of conspiracy theories. One prominent theory was that it was stolen by rogue modernist artists, trying to destroy the old world order and imposing their own. This line of thinking actually led to the arrest of Pable Picasso as a suspect, but he was never convicted. 

The painting was actually stolen by Vincenzo Perugia, who had briefly worked at the Louvre. Wearing a worker's smock, he hid in the museum until after it had closed, took the painting out of the frame, and hid it in a closet. The next morning, he hid it under his smock, and walked right out with it. He kept it in a hidden compartment of a trunk in his house for the next two years. 

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Mona Lisa.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 4 Apr. 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/Mona-Lisa-painting.

After keeping it in his house for 2 years, Perugia contacted a Florentine art dealer, hoping to sell the painting in Florence. After coming into contact, the dealer manged to convince Perugia to leave the painting with him, and called the police on him. He was arrested at his house half an hour later. His official reasoning was that he mistakenly believed that Napoleon had stolen it from the people of Italy. For the crime, he served a relatively light sentence of eight months. 

The Mona Lisa went on a tour of the Us between November 1962 and March 1963. It was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in DC and was displayed for 1 week in each location. The  week in the MET drew over 1 million visitors despite bad weather, and its time in DC brought 600 thousand visitors to the National Gallery of Art. This accounted for more than 50% of the normal yearly visitors to the DC museum.