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If you are asked to think of a famous painting there is a good chance that painting will be the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, which he created in 1503, probably as a commission for a local businessman who wanted a portrait of his wife.
Google “famous painting” and the Mona Lisa, with its enigmatic smile, occupies the number one position.
Go to the Louvre in Paris and it is the Mona Lisa that draws the biggest crowds, which, given its relatively small size, means it can be hard to get close enough to see properly.
But the Mona Lisa was not always so popular. When it was first hung in the Louvre, in 1797, it was placed between two much larger paintings. In the years that followed it did not attract much public attention, beyond a small group of art historians.
“The ‘Mona Lisa’ wasn’t even the most famous painting in its gallery, let alone in the Louvre,” explains historian James Zug.
This remained the case until the late summer of 1911, when a man named Vincenzo Peruggia entered the Louvre with two accomplices and hid in a storage cupboard until the gallery closed for the night.
When the coast was clear they took the painting off the wall, Peruggia slipped it under his coat, and they disappeared into the night.
It was a full 28 hours before anyone even noticed it was missing.
But when the theft was announced newspapers all over the world published sensational articles about the stolen masterpiece.
Intrigue added to the hype. Some suspected an American millionaire may have commissioned the theft. As tensions rose between France and Germany others thought the Kaiser was behind the heist.
Even Pablo Picasso was questioned as a suspect.
When the gallery reopened huge crowds gathered to see the space where the Mona Lisa had once hung.
“This is known as the scarcity heuristic,” says writer Dave Trott. “People never want something so much as when they can’t have it.”
The Mona Lisa was finally found more than two years later, after Peruggia attempted to sell it to an art dealer in Florence.
When the Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre it quickly became the gallery’s most popular exhibit.
It was not only the quality of the painting – there are many equally impressive pieces in the Louvre – but its story that made the Mona Lisa so famous.
