Monday, 23 December 2024
Monday, 23 December 2024
Exactly 113 years ago, on August 21, 1911, Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Mona Lisa, one of the most famous artworks in the world, was stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris.
The oil painting created around 500 years ago, but it gained global popularity after it was stolen.
“The high profile theft, and the appeals for its return, ironically helped publicise and popularise the painting,” according to Google Arts & Culture.
The theft gained further attention when famous artist Pablo Picasso was questioned for the incident.
The painting was recovered after two years, on Dec 12, 1913.
Even after 113 years the famed artwork still gets much focus, but mostly for negative reasons- like vandalism. There are many instances when people attacked this most visited, most analysed painting, with a rock, cake and even a teacup.
The Telegraph Online takes a look at the instances when Mona Lisa became the centre of controversies for protests as well as personal agitations.
1911: Someone steals Mona Lisa
A small credit for Mona Lisa’s worldwide fame goes to the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia. On August 21, 1911, Peruggia with the help of two other accomplices stole the painting and went out of Paris by train. The theft garnered media attention across countries. Peruggia held onto the painting for two years and stashed it in his apartment.
After a couple of years, he made an attempt to sell the painting to a Florence dealer in an attempt to give back to Italy its lost treasure. The deal backfired as the dealer called the director of Uffizi Galleries, who obtained the work and called the police. Peruggia spent six months in prison and the painting was later returned to the Louvre.
1956: Man throws rock at the masterpiece
A Bolivian man named Hugo Unjaga Villegas tossed a rock at the painting. The man had a stone in his pocket and threw it without any deeper motive. The painting was already kept behind the glass, so it didn’t cause any permanent damage. The rock still managed to knock off a speck of paint in one area, which was later repaired by art experts from the French state. The painting was restored and put back on display after a few weeks of the vandalism.
1974: Red painted Mona Lisa in Tokyo
The Mona Lisa was first exhibited in the Louvre’s Grand Gallery in 1804. Since then it has rarely been out of the museum. So when it went on a tour to the National Museum in Tokyo in 1974 , around 1.15 million people came to witness the artwork.
Among them was Tomoko Yonezu, a 25-year-old Japanese woman. She sprayed red paint on the canvas on its first day.
Disability activists in Japan had protested that the authorities restricted access for them at the National Museum during the exhibition in the name of crowd control.
Yonezu protested against this alleged discrimination and took matters in her own hands and sprayed 20 to 30 droplets of paint onto the painting. It didn’t cause any severe damage to the artwork and Leonardo’s masterpiece was spared.
Yonezu was later convicted of misdemeanor and had to pay a fine, but her act bore fruit as the museum set aside a different day for the disabled to exclusively visit the Mona Lisa.
2009: La Joconde gets hit by a teacup
In 2009, a Russian woman went to the Louvre and smashed a teacup against the painting. The woman had the cup concealed inside her bag and she was reportedly agitated because her French citizenship was denied. The Mona Lisa was not damaged because of her glass cage. Ten years later, the Mona Lisa glass was upgraded to a bulletproof one.
2022: Cake for Mona Lisa
The painting was smeared with a cake as a protest against climate change. This was staged by a 36-year-old man who had come to the museum in a wheelchair dressed as a woman. The people present at the gallery recorded the footage and circulated it on social media. The man said, ‘There are people who are destroying the earth’. The man was later detained by the French police and a criminal case was filed against him.
In this grab taken from video, activists gesture after throwing soup at the glass protecting the Mona Lisa, at the Louvre Museum, in Paris, Sunday. Jan. 28, 2024, shouting slogans advocating for a sustainable food system. It comes as French farmers have been protesting for days across the country against several issues, including low wages.
PTI2024: Mona Lisa tastes soup
Be it Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or Edward Munch’s The Scream, all had food thrown on them by alleged activists. In 2024, Mona Lisa joined the ranks when activists splashed soup across the glass in which Leonardo’s masterpiece sits.
The protestors appeared to be affiliated with Riposte Alimentaire, an environmentalist group focused on sustainable agriculture. The video of the entire incident was widely circulated in social media and one of the activists was seen asking the people, ‘What is more important? Art or the right to have a healthy and sustainable food system? Our agricultural system is sick.”
Glass Onion: Mona Lisa on fire
While these instances are in real-life, in the reel-world the Mona Lisa has been put on fire. The painting plays a major role in Glass Onion: the second film featuring the fictional detective Benoit Blanc’s (played by Daniel Graig). Towards the end of the movie, Helen (played by Janelle Monae) sets the Mona Lisa ablaze.
The writer-director Rian Joshnson wanted an object that was famous and popular for viewers all over the world to leave a lasting impact. He believed that the Mona Lisa was famous for being famous.
