Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Mona Lisa

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Alex Schmidt, Katie Goldin, and special guests Brea Grant and Mallory O'Meara explore why The Mona Lisa is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

The Mona Lisa, known for being a painting, famous for being smiling-ish. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why the Mona Lisa is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt. I'm very much not alone. I'm joined by my cohost, Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Yes. Hello. Hi. Hello. Hi. We're keeping it quick and hello

is because we have wonderful guests joining us as well. They co-host the Reading Glasses podcast. They also have a new No Stress Reading Journal coming out, the No Pressure Book Journal. We're so glad to be hanging out with them. Mallory O'Meara and Brea Grant. Hello, welcome. Hey, hey, hey. Hi. Thank you for having us. We're so excited. Thrilled about it. I love learning new things in the morning. Thank you for doing West Coast Morning. And yeah, there's a couple of glaciers on the CIF Discord who were like, please, please have these folks on. And I was like, of course. I was going to say the Glaciers are going to be real pumped about this. They love a max fun crossover We're mixing the streams

To catch the Mona Lisa, I don't know what the metaphor is now, but I like it. It's great That is our topic today and and we've done other episodes about other paintings that basically everybody has a mental picture of But we always start by asking the relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Mallory or Bria, you can start. How do you feel about the Mona Lisa? Well, I've read a lot of Dan Brown in my youth. So I fancy myself an amateur art historian.

And I don't have that much of a relationship to Mona Lisa. I've never seen her in person. The thing that springs to mind first is I know a lot of people are disappointed by how small she is, which seems very sad to me. But yeah, I mean, I appreciate her. I'm glad that she exists, but that's about as far as it goes. Brea, did you ever read Angels and Demons and Da Vinci Code?

Yeah, of course. But it was many years ago. I think I listened to it. Weirdly, when people still had, you had to get like 20 tapes like you and like listen to it like treasure chest full of, full of tapes from the library. Like maybe I read one and listened to another one. Um, yeah. On a road trip. Um, but I have seen the Mona Lisa in real life and she's she's, she's disappointingly small. She's small. What's disappointing is the number of people also trying to see the Mona Lisa.

Because you go in and you're like, I'm going to go all the way to the Mona Lisa and you walk all the way across the museum. And I was, I don't think I've been back to see her specifically it, I guess not. It's not her. It's it, right? She's not a woman. I mean, she is a woman, but it's a painting. It is a painting.

I'm sure she accepts any and all pronouns. Yeah, and I went, like I was like 20, 21 or something, and I went across the museum, and I have a picture of myself at that age, and I'm doing a thumbs up in front of her. Everyone is staring at her, and I'm like standing in front of them, and you can't see the painting,

and it's a pretty funny photo actually. Honestly, that's the kind of a photo you should take. The photo that doesn't make any sense to me is when people just take a picture of the painting without themselves in it. I'm like, oh cool, you took your own crappy version of a photograph that exists five million times on the internet in a much better version.

Cool, good for you. Yeah, because the experience is being there with like 45 people standing in front of you. Like that is the experience of seeing the Mona Lisa, which is actually like kind of a funny experience in itself, so like that's the photo to take. Yes, 100%. I've seen her as well.

I'm gonna boldly call her a her, because she and I, you know, we go way back. Oh, you have a deep relationship with the Mona Lisa. A deep relationship with her of her, because she and I, you know, we go way back to that. Oh, you have a deep relationship with Mona Lisa. A deep relationship with her of about, I don't know, I think I saw her about a year ago. And you know. Wow. How's she doing? How's she holding up?

She's good. She's good. She's moisturized. She's thriving. She's in her lane. She's in her gallery. I will say she does look very moisturized. She does look very moisturized, very like some kind of oil paint skin routine.

But she's, yeah, I didn't, I was not disappointed. I heard that too before I went that people were telling me like, oh, you know, it's disappointing. She's really tiny. People are expecting something a lot more grandiose. And I was like, all right, so I'm ready to be disappointed. But I actually quite liked it. There were a lot of people, but I was a people as well. So who am I to judge there being people?

But like, it is definitely like meeting a celebrity. But I did actually quite like the painting and I especially liked watching it because it felt sort of interesting to like walk when I would walk sort of back and forth as I'm snaking through this line. It's not so much that her eyes really follow you, but like different angles of perspective on the painting

kind of changes what her face looks like a little bit, which I found really interesting and I enjoyed that. Oh, that's really cool. I didn't know that. I had a similar experience. I've seen her, I'm going to go her, and I was told going into Paris that the Mona Lisa experience is way overrated and French people are mega rude. And then I think that set both my expectations to be pleasantly surprised.

Like people were nice and the painting was like nice, but it is this like immersive art experience where you're almost like wrestling tourists more than seeing it. The Mona Lisa mosh pit that you have to fight your way through. See that is, I'm from Massachusetts where everyone is extremely mean and rude and surly. So I feel like that has bred me to deal with French people. If you lead with the French language, they are very nice. They're like, great. They would just like you to start speaking French. I'm also much more excited about the painting having researched it. And let's talk about why

it's an exciting thing. Because our first fascinating thing about the topic, it's a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called in the numbers glow, I see them, blue eyes, stats sing in the rain. And the name was submitted by Johnny B. Thank you, Johnny. We have a new name every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or just hit pod at gmail.com. It's beautiful.

The first number this week is 1479. The year 1479. That's when Lisa Garardini was born. All right. And she's the person who's probably in the painting. We're almost definitely sure. It's Lisa Garardini. I didn't even know they have the same name. So is Mona a title? Yeah, it's sort of like my lady or madam. Oh, I thought her name was Mona. I kind of thought so too. It turns out it's a lady named Lisa. She is a Mona. Yeah, she's a Mona. Yeah. She's a real Mona.

So I'm Mona Mallory. This is she's a Mona. Yeah. She's a real Mona. So I'm Mona Mallory. This is Mona Bria, Mona Katie. Oh, I'm no lady, but in theory. I'm a signore or something? Katie, let me know. I don't know. Well, but Mona is not used in, I don't, well, I've never actually heard it in modern Italian.

Signora or signorina, like signora is like ma'am and signorina is miss. Donna means woman, but Mona I have not really heard in modern Italian. Yeah. So it's like an antiquated thing. I'm not going to try to say it Italiany because I will sound like that scene from Inglourious Bastards. So I'm not going to try. Sounds pretty fun. I don't know. Yeah. And apparently there's alternate names for the painting that are also in use based on her married last name. In 1495, she married Francesco

del Giacondo. And especially in French and Italian in the modern day, they call this painting La Gioconda. So, Mona Lisa is a little bit of an English world name at other places. Right. Lady Lisa. What year did you say she was born? 1479. 79, and she got married in 14... 95, around age 16.

16. Ayyyyy! Yeah, which was pretty late back then actually. An old maid. Yeah. I know. For the era, I don't know. It's like what it is.

Yeah. Well, everyone died when they were like 21, so it does kind of change this perspective a little bit. Yeah. So how old was her husband? Older. I need to double check the source. He was at least a decade older. Okay. I'm so surprised to find out that he was an older man. His name was Leonardo DiCaprio. Sorry folks. Good bit about him.

To clear us with our lawyers, he's never dated a minor as far as we know, but he does seem to... No, no, no, there's a different guy. This is Leonardo DiCaprio. He's a different guy. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's an old family name. Could be anybody.

He does appear to not date anyone older than the age of what? 25? 25. Yeah. It's like when you're 25, it's sort of like that old movie I forgot the name of where you have an expiration date. Oh, Logan's Run? Yeah, Logan's Run. Yep, Leonardo's Run.

Leonardo's Run. Yeah, oddly we think that at the time of Leonardo da Vinci beginning this painting, Lisa was around 24. No joke. So, just fitting it in. So, yeah, just under the wire. Timescale. Yeah, just made it.

If they waited another year, it would not have been a famous painting. Can I just say something weird? She looks older. I don't know why, but she looks older in the painting. Can I just say something weird? She looks older. I don't know why, but she looks older in the painting. I agree. It's the lack of eyebrows. Oh yeah. It's the lack of eyebrows, which as someone who naturally has almost no eyebrows, I always appreciated. But it's also, I think the way she's dressing, like she's got a lot of fabric on her, she's got the veil on, like she's not exactly like sexied up. She's not gussied up for this one.

Yeah. Right. She also does not really have visible eyelashes. Her skin is very smooth. But yeah, I think it's also like her expression is very, not matronly, but her expression is wise. And so she does not look, she doesn't look old though, right? That's what's interesting is she doesn't look like an old woman, but she doesn't look like

a young woman either. She just kind of looks a little ageless, a little ageless, but doesn't. Also back then, I mean, she's probably never had a vitamin before, you know, never had a vitamin and never seen the sun looking at this photo. They were just, she was eating nothing but bread and wine, so I'm sure. Bread and rats is all they ate. A nice rat sandwich. Right.

And the nobles had good quality domesticated rat. We all have a nice rat grinder. The best cuts of rat. Yep. She did come from wealth and marry into more wealth. This was all in the city of Florence, in what's now northern Italy, and it was its own sort of aristocratic republic.

And she was the third wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Both of his prior wives had died in childbirth, because that was this era that was just a high rate of that. Yikes, Arunis. And then in 1496, Lisa has a son and survives. And survives. Well, that's why you got to get a 16-year-old wife. You need those elastic joints. I'm so tempted to get on my soapbox about it. Actually when you're 16, your joints are not optimal for giving childbirth, but I realize how gross and weird that sounds anyways, no matter what you say. All right, Leonardo, calm down.

And she was 17, but yes. So then tragically, 1499, she gives birth to a baby daughter who then dies, but Lisa is still around. And then early 1503, she has a third pregnancy and gives birth to a daughter named Andrea, the family's second surviving child in three tries. And now we understand why she looks much older than 24. Yeah. Yeah, three kids. I mean, and also giving birth back then.

Man. Woof. Right. In this time, that's a pretty lucky rate of success all around. Yeah, two out of three. The family is just so overjoyed because not only is it a new baby, but they get a daughter after losing one a few years prior. And the two ways they celebrate are buying a new bigger house and commissioning a portrait.

And so that's where this comes from. She's a new mom in this portrait. She's got that new mom glow. She's got that new mom, I also have help to take care of this baby glow. Yes, many servants. I think that deserves its own just many takeaway number one. The Mona Lisa exists because a family celebrated a successful pregnancy and birth. That's kind of my favorite thing about it. There's a lot of these paintings where it just feels like somebody is rich and whatever,

and this was a specific nice landmark in their lives. It's cool. That's great because there's always this question of what's behind Mona Lisa's smile. And now we know it's that she gets- That she's tired. She gets a few hours away from her babies and she gets a little breather. She's like, actually, can we do another session? Can we do another sitting? Yeah.

No, babies are sweet, but yeah, a break is nice. Yeah. We'll talk later about how there's just a lot of theories about her facial expression. We don't really know why, but I like that. Like I like that idea that it's a combination of joy and tiredness and a break. Yeah. And relief.

It's sweet, sweet relief. Just sitting there in silence. She loves her family, but man, it's nice to have a break. Other numbers more about this painting, the dimensions of it. The dimensions are about 53 centimeters wide, the dimensions of it, the dimensions are about 53 centimeters wide, about 79 centimeters tall, which is 21 inches wide, 31 inches tall. And it also turns out it has shrunk over the years.

Whoa. Why did there, it was like a Dufen Schmerz laser that shrunk the painting? What's going on? Ray used to be a mural. smarts laser that shrunk the painting. What's going on? Right, it used to be a mural. Yeah. And it turns out this is painted on a piece of wood. It's not canvas.

It's like, at the time the common move was to take a big piece of wood. This is on white poplar and that shrinks over time. So we think it was up to a centimeter bigger in both dimensions. That's wild. That's a lot bigger. So is that going to affect the paint?

Like, is she going to look different? Like a shrinky dink? Yeah. Oh. She's all like... Don't put her in the tub. Don't put her in the tub. Yeah. Oh, my God.

Yeah, they're basically going to fight that forever. It's in surprisingly good condition for being about 500 years old. It's in a glass case in the Louvre with extremely careful temperature and humidity control. They're just going to fight that forever with this piece of wood it's on. Why does wood shrink like that over time? Does it just slowly lose moisture? What is it? Yeah, that's most of it, yeah. And it's organic matter, and so it'll just do that, yeah.

Right, right. And so they have like a little humidifier kind of stuff going to keep her, she is literally like well-moisturized and thriving. Daily facial for this woman. Daily facial. Brea, you think Mona Lisa Lisa slugging in there. Yes slugs every night

Yeah, the the next number about the painting is 51 years old That was the age of Leonardo da Vinci when he painted this that he was already very famous He'd already done paintings like The Last Supper. It was kind of a get for this family to hire Leonardo da Vinci. I wonder who their backup was. That's how DiCaprio comes into this. He was number two. Matt Damon. Couldn't get Leonardo. We got to get Matt Damon. Leonardo basically needed the money. He had begun his career in Florence and then he'd spent 17 years as a key artist for the Duke of Milan. But in 1499, the Duke died and France invaded Milan. Oops. So Da Vinci went back to Florence, lived on savings, mostly did science experiments for

free and then this one-off commission helped him make ends meet in the meantime. Okay. Wow. So being a freelancer has always been exactly like this. It's always been a hustle because you think you got a good thing going, then the French invade and now what do you do? We've all been there. And the other issue with this commission is that Leonardo was really flighty. Apparently

Leonardo was notorious for starting a commission and then just starting another commission and not finishing stuff kind of all the time. Wow. So freelancing has always been like this is what you're saying. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, he would just kind of leap around from gig to gig.

He got this gig in 1503, then took a government gig decorating an entire palazzo in 1504, was also working as a military engineer and an architect. He also took a gig to build a tomb for the Pope, as the architect of that. It was easier back then because it's not like anyone could look at your Instagram stories and see what you're doing. He was just like, oh, I'm real busy. I'll be back in a little bit. They have no idea. Well, how long does it take to complete a painting like this?

Theoretically, just a few weeks or months. And then he... Okay. Well, you can do a palazzo months. And then he- Okay, well you can do a Palazzo and a painting then. I mean, what's the big deal? Noted Palazzo painter, Brea Grant. She's like, I could bring that out on a weekend. Come on. Yeah.

And that is, I think, part of how he could take these gigs without people talking to each other and getting too mad. But he even by his standards of his time was really just kind of discombobulated and jumping from thing to thing. Like, he was also making scientific notes on how he thought bird flight works. You know, he was just all over the place. Sure. And the most amazing number there is less than 20. Because less than 20 is the number of surviving paintings that are at least partly

finished by Leonardo da Vinci. Damn. We have apparently thousands and thousands and pages of sketches and notes and stuff he made. He was constantly thinking and drawing, but he only ever finished very few things. So many of those cool S's. So many. Like hundreds. Leonardo da Vinci actually invented the cool S. He did. It took him years to perfect. The Mona Stussy? Yeah, it's very good. But yeah, we think he was just kind of all over

the place. And another source this week is the book, The Thefts of the Mona Lisa by nonfiction writer Noah Charney. He says in a letter late in life, Da Vinci lamented, quote, having never completed a single work. Like, apparently we think a lot of his paintings were only partly done by his standards, but they still got hung on walls, because he was just that all over the place. And does he didn't finish this one, this one included? He was lying in bed at night and he was like, I forgot to put her eyebrows on. Haunted him until his death. That leads us into takeaway number two.

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I'll link off to a BBC news piece where there's new analysis of a sketch of Leonardo that someone else drew. Oh yeah. It looks like his arm is in a sling. Exactly. Yeah, we see his right hand and arm and it's kind of propped up and also doing sort of a claw shape. You know, that could just be some weird pose, but we think that is a drawing of him having

what's called ulnar neuropathy. And either old age or an injury from something like a fall can cause this nerve damage in the arm. And we're pretty sure he could not hold a brush or paint at some point late in his life. Oh, buddy. See, this is why you got to put those eyebrows on. I always start with the eyebrows when I do a portrait because I feel like just as the eyes are the windows into the soul, the eyebrows are like the staircase into the curtains. All your paintings look like wooly wooly. Mono-W right, right. I don't want to mean to sound insensitive, but I know that people who have like say issues

with like being able to grip things like you can you can like wear something that you could like have something on your hand that like attaches to your hand so then you could still use it do you know if like there was he made any attempts to keep painting by, because he was really a great inventor as well, sort of coming up with ideas. Yeah, he could have invented a wild articulated hand thing. Yeah, that's a really good question because basically the way Leonardo worked and spent his days makes it confusing. Not just that a lot of times if he

stops a painting it could just be because he's flighty and out of the next thing, but also because he did stuff with both of his hands. He was relatively ambidextrous. He also wrote all his notes in backwards mirror scripts. But he almost exclusively painted with his right hand, we think. And whenever this started, we think he just shifted into teaching and advising other artists for money. I see. And so he didn't try to make it work. I just want to say this portrait of him that you sent where he's wearing this little hat.

I mean, he just looks like every guy they did in my 20s. Like a little beanie and a beard. He looks like he wears a silver like, he's a silver like barista. This man knows how to steam some milk, let me tell you. Yeah, exactly. That's for sure. And they also, every man I dated in my 20s also probably wrote in a mirror backwards, like for fun. Thinking it was quirky. Leonardo Leonardo da Vinci loved Bukowski books. He loved them so much. Yeah, loved it. Loved it.

Yeah. And he's like, this beard is unkempt. No beard oil. In a way that I feel like, yeah. Have you folks ever seen Ever After? Yes. Yes, I have. Yes, obviously.

Drew Barrymore is the- I love that movie. Is the Cinderella figure. Leonardo da Vinci is a character in that movie and he is working on his flying machine and he's the one who makes, spoiler alert, for a 20 year old movie, or 30 year old movie. Oh my God.

Yeah. Wow. Time is happening, folks. It's happening fast. He makes her the big wings in the movie. That's the whole thing. Oh, wow. I'm writing that down. I'm gonna re-watch that.

Yeah, she wears these butterfly wings and she's got sparkly makeup, and the butterfly wings I get because there's like a plot explanation for that, but where did they get glitter from? She might not have had eyebrows in that movie. I wonder if that was like his thing. Yeah, well, I mean, in that scene.

Also, it was the 90s, so like no one had eyebrows anymore. Well, they did. They were just like very, very like drawn on with like a micron. No joke. I'm glad you brought up Ever After because here's the thing. In real life and also in that movie, the end of Leonardo da Vinci's career is working for the King of France. After this time when he painted the Mona Lisa and is kind of bouncing around jobs in Florence, King Francis I, who is also depicted in Ever After, he was a Leonardo da Vinci superfan and hires him to be the court's leading painter and engineer and architect all at once and sets him up in this lavish manner. And so he lives and works in France until he dies a few years later. While he's in

France, in 1517, the assistant to a Catholic cardinal writes a letter claiming that Leonardo da Vinci is no longer physically capable of painting. He says, quote, one cannot indeed expect any more good work from Leonardo as a certain paralysis has crippled his right hand, end quote. Oh, buddy. What the hell is his problem? Not Leonardo's problem, but this guy like telling tales out of school. Like, why? Why is he like, hey, everyone, this guy's old. Like that seems unnecessary.

Yeah. It's definitely a little neggy. Oh, like that seems unnecessary. Yeah, it's definitely a little neggy. Yeah, and it's the situation where advanced analysis of the painting seems to confirm this. Another source here is University of Virginia art history professor Francesca Fiorani. She says that if you analyze the background of the painting, you've got this central Lisa and her head kind of divides the background into the right side of the background is done in a lot more detail and in several more layers of paints.

And we think we can see either when his hands stopped working or when he got distracted or both. He kind of just didn't finish one side of the background as much as he wanted to. But we all just kind of assume it was artistic intent. And so nobody really notices. Wow. Yeah, I noticed. I thought, I thought, man, I could do such a better job than this. Lazy. Look at this sloppy work. We all think of when we think of Da Vinci as sloppy, sloppy. Sloppy. Skill issue.

We don't know exactly when he stopped working on this painting and that is one of the only things we don't know about it. We're also not 100% sure it's Lisa del Giocondo. A few other women have been suggested as the subject, in particular a noble woman named Isabella d'Aste from the city of Mantua. But we would need significant new evidence to think it's not Lisa Del Giacondo. And then we really don't know why the facial expression is that way. There's like a million theories. Well, we already figured it out. So.

Yeah. Tired from babies. Yeah. I think we have the right idea. Tired from baby, but also very relieved to have time off from baby. The combination of those two emotions equals that expression. That is the expression of a woman who has very chafed nipples. Oh yeah, she's getting getting chomped on left and right, literally. There are wilder theories. One is that the smile that's slightly there is for doing a pun, like he was doing wordplay. Because again, a lot of people call this legioconda, referring to the last name, Giacondo. And you can pun that with an Italian word meaning joking or playful, and the English cognate is jocular. Some people think he called it la geoconda, and then there's a pun on

being playful with her smiling, which just seems very convoluted. I think it's just the emotions we're talking about. Yeah. She's probably been sitting there for 20 hours. Obviously, she's not going to have a big grin on her face. And then there's like a ridiculous theory that this painting is Leonardo dressed up in drag. There's no evidence for it at all, but people think like, oh, he's doing a weird smile because he's kidding. There's no beanie.

Yeah, there's no beanie. His classic beanie is missing. Case solved. It doesn't not look like him looking at the one you sent and the one- Yeah. Then looking at the Mona Lisa. Yeah, those big- it would be hard to get all that eyebrow hair off. Da Vinci's got plumper lips. I don't know.

Which, complimentary. Yeah. He's looking great. Yeah. He's looking great. People also obsess over the background. We think it's not any specific place in Tuscany. It's just sort of an amalgam of how that place looks. This painting was well known shortly after it was painted. People really liked the style and also Lisa is sitting closer to the viewer than most

people sat in portraits. This painting's been exciting to people for a long time, but the story of it's probably pretty straightforward. It's a lady who was happy and tired about successfully growing her family. I love it. Good for you, Lisa. You nailed it. Yeah.

I also like her eyes because a lot of it's about the smile, but she's really smizing. She is smizing for sure. She's smizing a lot. There's also a bit of the, her eyes cast a bit of a shadow in the corners, which gives it this natural looking smoky eye. She would have nailed a step and repeat. She really knows how to how to how to smize. Tyra would have been dunking her in like an aquarium and snapping photos.

Do you think this is the most famous painting on earth? Yes. I think it is. Yeah. I would say for sure. I think so. Our past painting episodes are American Gothic, The Scream, The Starry Night, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, that Hokusai would block print, and also Dogs Playing Poker, which is kind of its own thing. Dogs Playing Poker. But I think this might be more famous.

But I think even amongst all those Titans, I think Mona Lisa is still more famous than all of them. More than Dogs playing poker? Yeah. I mean, how many people line up to see, to take pictures with dogs playing poker is the question. That's the, that's the measurement here. People are dogs because it might be more famous among the dogs.

Mona Lisa probably does not hold a lot as much water with the, with the canine population of the world. Dogs playing poker probably beats, beats it out. Right. Lisa probably does not hold a lot as much water with the canine population of the world. Dogs playing poker probably beats it out. You want to ask Aggie to see which, show her one of each painting and see which one she recognizes. See which one she's into. Yeah, I can do it. I'll do a test. An A-B test. This one or this one?

Which do you like? And folks, that's two takeaways and a ton of numbers. We are going to take a quick break, then come back with the bizarre ownership history of the Mona Lisa. Theft and purchasing. Also that. Cool. Fun. Oh! Yeah. Hi, I'm Alexis.

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and play along with us at home. Or just listen in as we cry over our baker's soggy bombs. On MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back, and we're back with a few more numbers on the takeaway. The next number is the year 1550. 1550 is the latest possible date when King Francis I of France acquired the Mona Lisa, the French king and ever after and also history, he acquired it.

Do we know if it first went to Lisa and her family or was it like, like did they ever get to have it? Cause I thought they are the ones who commissioned it. That's the big question. And it's murky. We think they had it for at least a little bit and then at least one art collector or buyer got it in between it going from the Giacondo family to the King of France. It also could have been earlier than 1550. That's the latest date because a scholar named Giorgio Vasari saw it in the Royal French Palace in 1550. So it was finished by 1519 when Leonardo died and the French had it by 1550. Was it pretty immediately a success? Like pretty immediately people loved it? Yeah, apparently it was popular. We assume Francis paid a lot of money for it. And then French noble

women had other painters paint the French noble women in this style as like a fad once the French had it. No eyebrows? What do you mean this style? Wicked clothes, no eyebrows, smizing. Smizing. Pretty much, yeah. Almost one of those had in a hole pictures, like do me. It's like that kind of thing. Old timey Photoshop. Just put my face in there.

We think even maybe just shortly after Leonardo's death and after the Geoconda's had it a few years, Francis acquired it and probably just paid a lot of money for it. We don't have receipts or anything, but that just makes more sense than some kind of theft or some kind of invasion. The King of France stealing it from this woman. Imagine you're sleeping in bed at night and you just see a head rise up in your window and it's the King of France cutting his way through the glass. Huge powdered wig.

He can't get his crown through the window. He's really grumpy about it. His little heels clickety clacking as he's running away. With a big velvet sack over his shoulder. And it's the past, so instead of cool gadgets, he just smashes the window with a club. This is the latest thief technology. Although, he was the king, he probably would have outsourced that particular errand. Yeah. Yeah, that too.

To a French goon. Yeah. He doesn't work. To a French goon. Yeah. Like, he doesn't work for a living. He has everybody's money from feudalism. He can just buy it. It's very easy. Yeah.

Yeah. And ever since Francis bought it in the early 1500s, it's been the property of the French state. And that's through French revolutions, through republics and monarchies. Apparently in 1799, Napoleon had taken power and he put the Mona Lisa on the wall of his bedroom. Wow. Okay.

So, have any of you, Rhea knows this book because I've talked about it on the show before. Have Alex, Katie, have either of you read The Art Thief by Michael Finkal? I have not. No. It is an incredible, I highly recommend it for all your listeners. I did it, I read it on audio, it was amazing. It's a non-fiction book about the world's most successful art thief.

He stole what they believe to be is over $2 billion worth of art. But the reason why it took him a really long time to get caught is because he just put it all in his bedroom. He didn't sell it. He like didn't put it anywhere. Like he just brought it home and hung it up to look at. And he lived with his mom and he would be like, mom, don't go in my room. He literally just had like priceless paintings hanging in his bedroom.

It's like he's collecting Gundams or something, but it's famous paintings. Just tapestries and figurines and paintings just all up in his bedroom. So this is real. This is like a real history. Is this a fictional? It's real.

The book is called The Art Thief by Michael Finkel. It all started to happen in the 90s. And he was kind of really, it was notorious. He would just, he wouldn't sneak in at night. He would just walk in a day at like one o'clock in the afternoon, wait for the guard to be gone and just stuff it under his, he would either stuff it under his shirt or he would find the nearest open window, yeet it out the window and then leave and pick it up from outside. That's just incredible. I mean, like, what were these guards thinking? Like, there's that rectangular man again.

There's that man with the large trench coat. Yeah. Wow. That guy's marble butt is fantastic. He looks really good. That man looks incredible. Yeah, it was a really long time because he, I mean, he would always hit, he never hit like the Louvre, like he hit smaller museums, you know, so that's what he would like while a million people were looking at the Mona Lisa, he would grab something smaller and yeah, then just bring it home and be like sick and hang up in his room. That's so good. The idea of hanging the Mona Lisa up in your bedroom does feel like a very like teen boy

thing to do. Oh yeah. Yeah. Just like having a poster of like Cindy Crawford or something when you're a teen. He's got the Mona Lisa over his bed. He's like, Oh baby, this is awesome. She's hot. It's like that scene in weird science where you've've got the big poster of the lady over his bed.

Oh my God. I highly recommend reading that book if this episode is interesting to you. It sounds really interesting. Also just really excited about a in real time reading glasses book recommendation. Feels good as a listener. That's neat. That's, Brian and I are simply a stack of book recommendations in a trench coat. Wow. Yeah.

And this revolutionary period, which Napoleon's right after, it also leads to a lot of things that were royal palaces getting converted to not that. And if people don't know, the Louvre in France was a royal palace and then they just made it an art museum. That I didn't know. Oh yeah, yeah. It was like a giant palace. And they're like, there's so much art in here anyway. Let's just put some velvet rope out front and a ticket taker. And honestly, that's amazing.

Yeah. And so we think the Mona Lisa was at least briefly in the Louvre when it was a royal palace. And then in 1804, it got moved back to the Louvre during the beginning of the museum era. That's still this era. And so it's mostly been in the Louvre ever since, but it was even kind of in there before that when it was just a king's property. Wow. Do we know, like, so after the revolution, do we know why people didn't just like burn everything to the ground, right? Because there was so much righteous fury towards nobility for having all the wealth while other people would starve.

So when they, you know, like there seemed to be some recognition of like, well, we could actually preserve this and make it the people's palace. How did that decision kind of come to be? That's a really good question. It's like partly by accident and partly they could just repurpose the big architecture. It was hard to build whole new giant government buildings. And then it's also that Napoleon rapidly commandeered the revolution and made himself an emperor. I see. And they were kind of back to king stuff pretty quickly in that sense. I also like the idea of a bunch of revolutionaries burning stuff and then they get to the Mona Lisa and they're like, I don't know, we should save this chick.

She looks awesome. She's hot. Let's save her. She's hot. I love chicks with no eyelashes. It's like my personal flavor of lady. Lady flavor. Smooth like a personal flavor of lady. Lady flavor. Smooth like a sphinx cat.

Yeah. It's just kind of been famous this whole time and mostly been in the Louvre. The one big exception since it got put in the Louvre Museum is January 1963. That's the number there. January 1963. That is when France put the Mona Lisa on a ship and sailed it to Washington DC. For what? For a loan to the United States. To meet the president? Like for what? Right. The Medal of Honor. For a total of 88 days, it was in first the National Gallery in DC and then the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and a loan that drew 2 million visitors to see it.

Wow. I was going to say, how did they secure that one? And also how did they keep it temperature controlled and stuff on the ship? Yeah, both great questions. They basically just rapidly reset up temperature control in every location. And then the reason we got it is basically that Jackie Kennedy is really cool. We knew that. We knew that. I'm getting stressed out just thinking about that. Like I didn't even I got stressed out moving my cats from my old house to my new house. I can't even imagine sailing the Mona Lisa across the ocean.

Like I would be so I wouldn't sleep the entire time. Wrap her up in some foam, put some packing peanuts in it. Bingo boingo. I bet. In that situation, do they pay money for that? Or is this just a goodwill, like, oh, get people interested in French culture? Why do it? The official story is that it was all just diplomacy and we just talked France into doing it. And the alleged story is that Jackie Kennedy convinced the French culture minister to develop a crush on her. And then on the spur of the moment,

one day said, you can borrow the Mona Lisa. First of all, this, I don't like the way the story is told. I don't think she convinced him to have a crush on her. Maybe he just had a crush on her. And she's like, I don't use this for the American people. And then she used it for the Mona Lisa. She wrote him a letter. This is why you should have a crush on me. Number one. My name should be like so.

Circle yes or no. Number two, send me the Mona Lisa. Yeah, did they have an exchange program? Did they send over a Georgia Oki babaski? Was it just a one-way transaction here? She was so charming. He sent over the Mona Lisa. I love that.

They sent us the Statue of Liberty. French can't get enough of those American women. True. Yeah. And, Brea, you're absolutely right. That phrase, that's so weird. We know that they took out an insurance policy worth $100 million in money of the time for the shipping, but there wasn't any payment.

It was just a diplomatic loan and there's video of JFK. In the drop down menu for shipping, it was like free shipping, two to four weeks, express shipping. $100 million. $100 million. If you get Louvre Prime, that's faster. They just put it in a cannon and shoot it across the ocean to you. The BBC says Jackie Kennedy spent more than a year visiting France, always

talking to this culture minister and then hosting him at the White House. And you have JFK doing a speech saying France has the world's greatest artistic tradition. And thank you for this loan. This is a heist. This is a long game heist. I love the thought of Jackie Kennedy with her cool sunglasses being like, you know what gets me so horny? Art. It'd be so cool if you gave me some of your art, like twirling your hair. This is a masterful move.

I like the idea that JFK and Jackie Kennedy were just both, they're like basically in an open relationship using their incredible sexual prowess to like do diplomacy with everyone. That's bring that back. That's the kind of international relations we need to get back to. She comes home to JFK high fives him like, I just got you the Mona Lisa. And he's like, that great. I just, I flirted my way to in the Cuban missile crisis.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we need. Make America horny again. Make America horny again. It would be funny if like JFK forgot Marilyn Monroe is American.

He's like, oh, this was a waste of time. What was I doing? I was trying to get some Dutch masters paintings over here. She's not Dutch. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the only times the Mona Lisa's made a major trip out of France in like 500 years.

The other big one was an exhibition in Tokyo in 1975. Other than that, it pretty much stays in the Louvre and very rarely ever moves. She seduced the cultural minister that time. So yeah, that's maybe the most significant art tour in American history, is Jackie Kennedy getting the Mona Lisa. And then our last takeaway is probably the most thrilling departure of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre because takeaway number three. One of the biggest reasons the Mona Lisa is world famous today is a 1910s media craze when it was stolen. Oh, wow. Somebody stole the Mona Lisa in 1911. It was stolen by an Italian employee of the Louvre.

Oh, mama mia. And he was really just trying to make money. And then after he got caught, he claimed it was for noble political reasons. How do you make money with a painting that famous? Like who will buy that from you? Are you? No, I think you set up a little, you get one hour alone to like hang out with the Mona Lisa without a bazillion people around you., one hour alone to hang out with the Mona Lisa without a bazillion people around you. You're saying he's pimping out the Mona Lisa.

Well they're not doing anything weird to it, but it's the only chance you get to look at the Mona Lisa without 100 people. You and the Mona Lisa alone in a room. It's a Mona Lisa deep show. 50 bucks an hour, yeah. I'd pay that, cause then you get to look at, I mean, so would Maria. Like you finally get to...

It's very cheap, actually. Yeah, I would totally do it. It's a really good rate. Oh, yeah. Hundreds of world detectives pursued this, and then he got caught when he tried to fence it in late 1913. He went to a dealer in Florence and the dealer contacted the authorities. Yeah, of course.

They didn't need to look at the people working at the museum. This seems like the first guy that they should look at. That is very poor detective work. Yeah. He worked at the museum. He and two other employees stole it together in a conspiracy. Wow. I mean, Frank should have flirted their way into some of our crack American detectives.

That's what they should have done. Send Jessica Fletcher over there. She'll have it done in 45 minutes. In the Da Vinci Code, is Tom Hanks a detective? He is a professor of symbology at Harvard University. He is. So I've never read- But he does solve something. He solves art history mysteries. It's even dumber than him just being a detective.

It's really silly. It's so funny. I think Dan Brown himself, isn't Dan Brown, he's like an art historian. It feels like he's sort of writing himself in it. And then there's this scene in the book where there's a young woman, a college student, who's really into symbology. And she's like, wow, professor, this is fascinating. Big Indiana Jones energy. I never realized that professors of symbology were so hot and attractive.

That's basically all I know about these books. Sounds realistic to me. That's what girls love is symbology and ciphers. Symbology? You bust out a cipher and it's like, well, that's it. I mean, we're joking, but if a guy busted out a cipher on a first date, I would be intrigued. Here's my decoder ring. It's like, all right, your house or mine? I mean, I have had some pretty awful first dates, so that sounds pretty sick. Yeah. It's a okay hobby, you know? Yeah.

And the other amazing thing about this, because as y'all pointed out, it is surprising that you would try to sell the Mona Lisa because it's the most famous painting on earth. But actually in the 1910s, it was kind of at a lull in its fame. It was merely one of many famous Renaissance paintings. Maybe this was all a big scheme to get her more famous. Marketing. By accident, that's what happened. Basically, this guy stole the Mona Lisa and before he could begin selling it, it was world news every day in a way where it became a lot more

famous and then he couldn't sell it. So he made no money off of this. No money. That's hysterical. That is so funny to me. But again, it does kind of smell like a marketing stunt. You know, Brea, maybe that's how we bump up reading glasses. One of us gets kidnapped for a little while. Oh, great. That's how we bump up reading glasses. One of us gets kidnapped for a little while. Great. I was hoping you were going to do an art heist, but that's fine.

That's cool. Yeah, the quote unquote mastermind here, his name is Vincenzo Perugia. And his specific job at the Louvre was installing protective glass cases for paintings. Oh, well, there you go. Yeah, that's where you want to be because then you put in a bad glass case where, you know, or you're like, this is the world's most transparent glass and you're holding it but it's actually nothing and then, ooh, really, you can see right through it. It's just a force field. It's actually a force field.

You're just a Looney Tunes character at that point. He also sells walls that look like tunnels that you can run into. It's the famous French mime tradition of just pretending there's glass. And like Rhea said, that's the first person they should have interrogated because he knew how to open the glass cases. He installed them. They were mostly doing this because in 1907, a mentally ill, probably Vandal, had used a knife to slash up a different Louvre painting.

The alleged reason was anarchism. Could have just been mental illness. But then the Louvre says, okay, teams of contractors just put cases on as many of the big paintings as possible. As he spends every day at the Louvre, he learns the exact security guard schedules. So then he, into accomplices, pretty easily steal the Mona Lisa in 1911. Not to be me too much, but there is a really great book called The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova that is about, it's like a twin timeline book about someone who slashes up a painting called Lady and the Swan in modern times. And you find out that that person has like a connection

to the person who painted it. And it's like a big, really, really good mystery by the lady who wrote The Historian. But it's called The Swan Thieves. So if you were on the edge of your seat listening to this episode and you love art history mysteries, read The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. That sounds like a good read. I can't lie to you, I'm slightly disappointed that it's not a book about a pair of swans who are also thieves and they steal art.

Just honk, honk, honk. They were the second people who stole the Mona Lisa actually. They got her between their wings and just flew off and no one could catch them. I mean, who's going to confront a swan? They're scary. They are very scary. They're very mean. Yes. They're really tough. Yeah.

Yeah. And the other main reason they could steal this is that the Lou basically had no security. Apparently, a few years before this, a journalist had done a stunt to prove how little security there was in the Louvre. They went into the museum and snuck into a sarcophagus and spent the entire night inside the sarcophagus. That's sick. And then just popped out in the morning like, there's no security.

I was a mummy all night He was cursed forever, but still good point I guess touche All his organs immediately turned to dust as soon as he popped out, but That's awesome The the other wild reason this is global news is that other? Artists and other thefts got caught in the dragnet of trying to find the Mona Lisa. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, because what happened is apparently people were just kind of taking stuff all

the time. And two early suspects for stealing the Mona Lisa were a Polish-French poet named Guillaume Apollinaire, who's mostly famous in France. We don't know him in the English world so much. And then his other suspected co-conspirator was Pablo Picasso, who is Spanish, lived in Paris. They're like, oh, he's so jealous. He's stealing other paintings to get them out of the museum.

Have you seen him try to paint a woman? He can't do it, so he's jealous. He's so jealous. No, he can't get the noses on right. His rage has built to a point where he has to steal the Mona Lisa to study it. That's the best supervillain origin story. So they were like, hey, we think you guys stole it. And one of the reasons they looked into it is those guys had had contact with a different

art thief who stole two statues from the Louvre, which were sitting in Picasso's residence. He bought them and knew they were stolen. Oh, amazing. Wow. Wait, the guy who liked to seduce teenage girls like to steal things? What a surprise. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, he's really not a great guy, it turns out. And so- Y'all know way more about Picasso than I know. I know nothing about Picasso. Is that all that true? Oh yeah, he was not a great guy. A lot of quote unquote muses, yeah. And he can't paint.

The eyes are uneven. Like, has anyone noticed this? Yeah. And then, and yeah, the resolution to that is Picasso and Apollinaire get put on trial. They confess one of them's weeping in the courtroom and then they're let off with a warning after returning the statues. But they didn't seal the Mona Lisa. They had nothing to do with this other crime. Wow. Well, so we have the Mona Lisa to thank for a crackdown on art theft.

We love that. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of why it's so secure now is that it was significantly stolen and, yeah, Perugia ends up fencing it after keeping it under his floorboards for 28 months. He basically needs to pay rent and says, screw it, I'll just try to sell this world famous painting and gets caught. It's like the telltale heart. Like every morning he also can't stop thinking about it being

under there. Yeah. So then after he does this, he claims, I wasn't just trying to make money. I'm an Italian patriot. Oh, we've all heard that story before. Okay. All right, Carl. Sure. It's like, I was trying to bring it back to Italy where she belongs. She missed our spaghetti.

Yeah. Yes. And his claim partly falls apart because he says Napoleon stole it, which is just not historically accurate. Napoleon invaded Italy and stole a lot of other art, but King Francis bought this about 300 years before Napoleon did any of that. Also where did he live? Unless it was Florence, that used to be a different country.

There was no Italy when this painting was painted. Yeah, that too. That doesn't make sense. Also, since then, art historians have had to debunk that. It's kind of floated around the internet as a myth, and they've had to occasionally tell the world, like, hey, this Italian blog is wrong. It's not really stolen from Italy, like some kind of Parthenon marbles or something. This was a regular purchase by the guy who employed him.

It was a regular purchase? It's not weird. Can I get some baguettes and spaghetti and the Mona Lisa? Cool. Yeah. Yeah. There were one or two times the French court turned down like trade offers from other royal courts.

Like, hey, we'll give you two, we'll give you like a whole buy and then another painting for the Mona Lisa. And they just turned it down for business reasons. Like it just wasn't a good enough trade offer. This is Pokemon for rich colonizing countries. They're like, we'll give you the Mona Lisa if you give us some Michelangelo. How about that? Yeah. No, this one's a shiny. It's a shiny. That's right. This one's a holograph. If you tilt her back, actually, she's holographic. No. Yeah. That's why the Mona Lisa is shorthand for the most famous painting in the world now is that it got famously stolen in the 1910s. It's so fascinating. Wow.

And it's also great. So that's why. You always need a little bit of a scandal, I think, to make something that famous, right? A little bit of excitement, a little bit of scandal. If Mona Lisa had had an affair with JFK, we would have heard about it. I mean, we don't know that. We don't know that she didn't. She was in the US at that time. I mean, maybe Jackie was not the only one doing some flirting to get her over here.

Jackie Kennedy worked the Culture Minister. JFK worked the Mona Lisa. folks. That is the main episode for this week. And I want to say another thank you to Mallory O'Mara and Zabria Grant for joining us and hanging out and being a fellow maximum fun set of podcast hosts because Because their show is called Reading Glasses. It's simply fantastic. I know the glassers, the folks who listen already know. And I also want to shout out their new book, which is a book journal. The title is the No Pressure Book Journal, because it is a no guilt, no shame, no stress journal to help you read better and enjoy books. And I feel like they achieve that every week on their podcast.

So please give yourself the gift of a no pressure book journal. It'll come to you in that very beginning of January 2025. So what a great way to start the year of reading. And beyond that, welcome to the outro of this episode with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the Mona Lisa exists because a family celebrated a successful pregnancy and birth. Takeaway number two, the Mona Lisa might be an unfinished painting and might be the last thing Leonardo da Vinci was able to paint. Takeaway number three, one of the biggest

reasons the Mona Lisa is world famous, is a 1910s media craze around its theft. And then so many stats and numbers about basically two entire biographies, Lisa Ghirardini and Leonardo da Vinci, also the progression of people moving this painting around the world from collections to the Royal House of France to Jackie Kennedy. Those are the takeaways. Also I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason that this podcast exists. We cannot do it without you, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly

fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is protesters attacking and vandalizing the Mona Lisa. Visit sifpod.fund for that bonus show, for a library of almost 18 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, also special bonus audio from Reading Glasses and the other Maximum Fun podcasts. It is special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things? Check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org.

Key sources this week include the book Leonardo, the Complete Paintings and Drawings. That's a Toshin book written by art historians Frank Zollner of the University of Leipzig and Johannes Nathan of TU Berlin. Another book called The Thefts of the Mona Lisa. That's by nonfiction writer and Pulitzer nominee Noah Charney, Expert Interview with University of Virginia art history professor Francesca Fiorani, and then lots of news coverage in particular from the BBC and from The Guardian of all the things going on with this masterwork.

That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wapenshe people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Mallory and Bria each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino or Tongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, in Mallory and Bria's location, and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing

stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Cause each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 153, that's about the topic of apples, and fun fact there, the previous show to that one was about pentagrams,

and the inside of an apple contains a pentagram. So I recommend both those episodes. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken, Un-Shaven by the Boodos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra extra special thanks go to our members, and thank you to all our

listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.