Hey everybody welcome back to explain that five podcast. We take the questions you always want to ask and talk about them in a way That's easy to understand really hosts and Tim and I'm Kevin So Kevin today we're talking about one of the most famous paintings if not the most famous painting in the world Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting when many other paintings are technically harder? You know very few art experts and historians would even regard it more Lisa to be the best of the art of inches paintings It became much more famous after it was stolen, right? Yeah, yeah I can explain that most of the Mona Lisa's fame comes from how it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris It was not that long ago.
It was in August 21, 1911 and it was stolen by an Italian handyman named Vincenzo Perugia Now Perugia had worked at the Louvre and was familiar with a lot of the museum's operations Oh, so it's an inside job and how did he do it? He hid inside a museum overnight and dressed in a white smock like the museum staff was able to remove the painting early in the morning Before the museum opened to the public he even took off to protect the case and frame and they walked out with the painting hidden under his clothing But at the time the telegraph and the radio were just becoming widespread And so news of the Mona Lisa theft became one of the world's first global news stories Basically this made the name of a Lisa synonymous with fine art and now it is probably the most reproduced image in the world So let's talk about the painting itself. What sets the Mona Lisa apart from other Renaissance painting? Oh, that's a combination of a few things first.
There's Leonardo's innovative brush technique called Sufumato This is the soft blending technique for the soft transitions between the different colors and the psychological complexity captured in her smile Now the brush strokes are really quite unique. They are the bench. She used strokes so small They were almost invisible. So this also created a very photographic painting in a time when it wasn't really done The painting was also one of the first Italian portraits to depict the sitter in front of an imaginary landscape Now obviously we also have to talk about the smile.
We will talk about that and Lastly, there's the historical mystery actually surrounding her identity which also adds to be a leer Well, let's talk a little bit about that first. Isn't the identity known? Also the title of the painting Mona Lisa does give you some strong clues, right? So most people presume that it depicts a noble woman Lisa Delo Giacondo Although we actually cannot be sure that she actually looked like that She was the wife of a wealthy Florentine silk merchant named Francesco Del Giacondo And the painting is thought to have been commissioned for a new home they were building And so that's a Lisa part, but what does the word Mona Lisa actually mean?
Mona and Italian is basically a polite form of address originating as Madonna So it's similar to like a ma'am of a dam or my lady in English. Okay. Now. Let's talk about her smile What makes it so captivating?
It's the ambiguity of her expression. I really fast-dates people It's been interpreted in so many ways from happy to sad reflecting the viewers own emotions and thoughts Some people observed that Mona Lisa's smells disappeared when observed with the recognition partly because of his shadows I make her smile the way the human eye processes visual information is less suited to pick up shadows when our eyes look directly at the painting But our peripheral vision can actually pick up shadows quite well So next time you look at the Mona Lisa try not to look directly at her smile and see how that looks I've heard that the Mona Lisa is one of the only paintings to have its own mailbox at the Louvre. What's that about? Yes, this one's also true visitors just loves sending letters to the painting expressing their admiration or seeking advice It's unique.
I don't think any other painting has its own mailbox and the Louvre Museum actually does a lot to keep the Mona Lisa Protected these days and I know to spend a lot of money on it. So how do they do that? Yeah, yeah, the Louvre goes to great lengths to protect the painting everything from temperature control to bulletproof glass Ensuring its preservation amid millions of visitors each year is no small feat And finally going back to that year 1911 when the painting was originally stolen something interesting happened to visitor numbers that year That's right. Apparently when the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 the empty space it left on the wall attracted more visitors in the painting previously had everything Well, that's interesting.
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