Short Stuff: The Mona Lisa

think that, and you will think that. Yeah, it's two ft six inches by one nine inches. It's a small little painting, it is, and they have it behind some seriously protective casing. You can't get too terribly close to it, and you can get kind of close, but not you know, you can't just walk up right on it. And um, I think we talked a lot about the why they have it under that casing in our How the Louver Works episode, if I remember correctly, Yeah, I think we

covered that. Uh, this is a little more about the lady herself. Um, they think for sure that Mona Lisa was a person, a real person, and there's been a lot of debate over the years, but the current thinking is, what's her name? Oh boy, is Lisa Gerardini del gian Condo um also known as Lagio Conda very nice because she's a lady and she was a wealthy woman married to a wealthy silk merchant. And the thinking is that he had this commissioned to celebrate the birth of their

impending birth of a child. Yeah, and it's bizarre to think that we don't we don't know much about the Mona Lisa. It's not that old. I mean, um, da Vinci started it, and I think fifteen three is when he started the painting exactly, which is what I was going to say eventually. Um, So it's not it's not so ridiculously old that that it's just completely lost to history. And yet it is because the the Giocondo family never

took possession of it. And the reason that they think that they're almost certain that that is who it is, that it's led Giaconda in that painting, um, is that there there was a book written about it in the time that Leonardo da Vinci's sons were still alive and so still around. To refute this, if it was incorrect that it was her, that she was the one who

was seated there. And then years and years later somebody found a margin note somewhere in some book or some notebook that said as much that Lisa Giardini Guerardini sorry um was the Mona Lisa, and that she was going to be sitting for this work that Da Vinci was working on. Right, and they speculate about the impending pregnancy because she has some kind of loose clothing on, and that little smile uh is interpreted as, Oh, guess what's coming.

I'm about to get birth. I can't wait. So we should probably talk a little bit about the um the artistry of the Mona Lisa. I'm gonna go ahead and throw it out there. Yeah. Oh really, are you crazy? You don't like it? It's not that I don't like it. I'm just I'm not a big fan of portraiture period. Uh. Not a lot of portraits knocked me out like others. Um. Other paintings do. UM. I can appreciate them, for sure, but I've never looked at a portrait and been like, man,

I want that in my house so bad. Not a big Rembrand fan, huh. So, um, I think one of the reasons I appreciated Chuck is because I recently saw Decoding Da Vinci Cova, a little Nova documentary Tom Hanks movie. Yeah, he's got a mullet in and running around all over the place. Um No, this was this was even more legitimate than that. But they really go into, you know, the techniques that he used in this painting, especially this Fu Mouto method he's very well known for, which uses

shading and and um some other stuff. You're gonna have to watch the nov episode for it to be explained. But but the upshot of it is there's no lines in the Mona Lisa. There's no hard lines, there's no he didn't paint a line, he suggested lines. Every line in that painting doesn't actually exist. It's all an illusion created by the painting techniques that he was using on the Mona Lisa. And they really go to town explaining this, and it really makes it that much easier to appreciate. Yeah.

Another thing that's mentioned here in the House of Works article is the fact, and this kind of stood out to me, is mostly when you see portraits, especially especially oh my lord, uh from that era, is you have someone in a room maybe and not necessarily a landscape as well, or landscapes, and there were portraits and never

between shell meet, but he blended those two things together. Uh. And there's a landscape behind the Mona Lisa and an aerial perspective, and she's very much in a big open space with this these mountains and winding paths behind her. And your eye doesn't always go to that because you're looking at that face and that smile, but that dreamy

landscape is certainly back there. Yeah, And I think what what they're what they're remarking about is that is supposedly an imaginary landscape and that people didn't paint imaginary ones. And there're people have tried to prove that it actually is an imaginary most recently a pair of Italian researchers

Olivia and Neshi and Rosetta Borkia. I don't do it nearly as well as you, but they said, no, it's this place in Montefeltro, in the east of Italy, east of Florence on the Adriatic coast, and they're like, this mountain is this one? This is this mountain? They said, this bridge used to be there, but it's since been destroyed. This lake is no longer here, is filled in my mud sides. But they're pretty sure they pinpointed it. But

that doesn't necessarily mean they're correct. It's it's still speculative, but they have they seem to have a pretty good case to back it up. But a lot of the position is that Legio Conda posed in front of that. No, no, just that he he um he that's why he painted, you know. Yeah, so so yeah. I don't think that they were saying like he made her sit there for four years or that she was ever even there, but that it wasn't. Their point is that it's not a

made up landscape. Well no, I mean, I'm sure he took a photograph of her right and then just worked from that, knowing da Vinci, he probably did. I will say that the Mona Lisa's eyes following you, the Mona Lisa effect, which he did not invent, but it is referred to that way anyway. And I know you're pretty um, pretty into this idea that eyes can follow you, that works on a laptop even it does, and and that's a whole other short stuff if you ask me. But this, um,

this this Mona Lisa effect. That being called that the eyes following you around the room. The meaning that's actually a misnomer because they've proven that the Mona Lisa does not actually demonstrate the Mona Lisa effect. It did to me, man, does it? I mean, I don't know. Maybe it was the fact that I got super drunk at lunch, but I was sitting at my desk and I was I was going, you know, heavy, back and forth to the left and right, and they seemed to be following me.

Or maybe it was suggested so I saw it that way. I don't know. I wonder that, man, I wonder if that is because when I looked and saw that she doesn't have that effect, I was like, oh, yeah, I totally see it. They some researchers measured where people pointed on the screen or pointed on themselves where she was looking, and most people said she was looking past them to their right about a thirty degree angle. H Well, it may have been power suggestion, yeah, for both of us.

Who knows. All right, Well, let's take a break here and then we'll here you will hear we will say a little bit about when and why the Mona Lisa became soups famous. Alright, Chuck, I thought that break would never come, right. So, um, it's funny to think as famous as the Mona Lisa is, but she was fairly neglected by the world until the mid nineteenth century. And even then, just like a small little group of French art critics finally discovered you know this da Vinci painting,

and we're like, this is a masterpiece. This is an amazing work of Renaissance art. We haven't noticed all these few hundred years, but it's amazing. They didn't really tell the rest of the world, and people like the Mona Lisa was fine, but it wasn't until she was stolen off of the wall in the Louver in nineteen eleven that the world really sat up and took notice. It's very much like that Cinderella song, you don't know what you got until it's gone. That happened with the Mona

Lisa too. I think they wrote that about the Mona Lisa, right, probably, Yeah, August twenty one, nineteen eleven. There were three handymen that just kind of went out the side door with the Mona Lisa. It took twenty six and this was kind of evidence that she wasn't that big of a deal. Yet it took a whole twenty six hours before anyone

even noticed she was gone. And um whereas today you know, there would be alarm bells like second it was removed, but it was put in the papers and all of a sudden it kind of ran away in the press. The loop shut down for a week and everyone from Pablo Picasso to JP Morgan were named as potential suspects. Yeah, they thought they thought JP Morgan was financing people to steal them for steal like artworks for him. Amazing. Yeah,

and actually it's funny that raised this other thing. Chuck real quick, there's um there are accusations against wealthy Chinese people, um like who are funding art heists to repatriate Chinese art. Interesting if there's like a whole string of art heists around the world that are just um ancient Chinese works of art and they think that some people in China are financing it. It's It was a g Q article

called the Great Chinese Art Heist. Wow. Well, I certainly believe in repatriation to a certain degree, but I don't know if you should go to that length, right, Uh So, anyway, the newspapers get it out, Lou shuts down. People were coming to the museum to see what was known as the Mark of Shame, that empty, you know, non cigarette stained square on the wall, and every one went and went,

is that how big it is? That little non dusty square. Uh. And then it took a full twenty eight months for this thing to finally reappear with an attempted re sale from Vincenzo Perugia, and the owner of the art gallery that was being offered this painting said, yeah, this is the mona Lisa. You know what, I'm gonna make sure you get a good reward for this. Just stick around

and stay right there. I'm gonna go in the other room and make a quick phone call to the reward center right and make sure you get your rewards and just reward right there, reward. And then Homer Simpson just stood in place and waited for the Italian uhl at the com Yeah and he uh he got busted and he got eight months in prison for this. It was a pretty big art heist. But he was in Florence trying to sell it. So he's stolen from the Louver in Paris and His defense was, Napoleon stole this from

us uh, and I was repaid treating it myself. And I think he actually kind of got you know, eight months isn't exactly a slap on the wrist, but it's also not a um, a ridiculous sentence, either for for what he got so or for what he did so. Um.

I think that actually helped that defense worked. Do you know if he read it out his two buddies, I don't know, And I don't know if it would have mattered because he was the one that lived with it in like the false bottom of his steamer trunk in his apartment for two years before he he tried to sell it, so I don't know if it would have helped at all. Man, I wish I had a false bottom steamer trunk. Those are would be pretty handy. Oh oh,

I thought you meant like a bottom. No no, no, it just a false bottom trunk sings like false bottom girls. They make the rock and world go around kind of false bottom. Stop it. Can we say that it's not the seventies any longer? I think we're okay, okay, do you got anything else? Nothing? Well? Then everybody short stuff says Rivadrech. Stuff You Should Know is a production of i Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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