THE MONA LISA IS STOLEN FROM THE LOUVRE IN 1911

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Tina Picotes.

Tina is a painter and she loves Art. They have been talking about one of the most interesting facts that happened on a day like today in 1911 when Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, and has been described as the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.

The painting's novel qualities include the subject's expression, which is frequently described as enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.

The painting is likely of the Italian noblewoman Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517.

Recent academic work suggests that it would not have been started before 1513. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic itself, on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1797.

The Mona Lisa is one of the most valuable paintings in the world. It holds the Guinness World Record for the highest known insurance valuation in history at US$100 million in 1962, equivalent to $650 million in 2020.

More information: CNN

Vincenzo Peruggia (8 October 1881-8 October 1925) was an Italian museum worker, artist, and thief, most famous for stealing the Mona Lisa on 21 August 1911.

In 1911, Peruggia perpetrated what has been described as the greatest art theft of the 20th century. It was a police theory that the former Louvre worker hid inside the museum on Sunday, 20 August, knowing the museum would be closed the following day. But, according to Peruggia's interrogation in Florence after his arrest, he entered the museum on Monday, 21 August around 7 am, through the door where the other Louvre workers were entering. He said he wore one of the white smocks that museum employees customarily wore and was indistinguishable from the other workers.

Vincenzo Peruggia

When the Salon Carré, where the Mona Lisa hung, was empty, he lifted the painting off the four iron pegs that secured it to the wall and took it to a nearby service staircase. There, he removed the protective case and frame.

Some people report that he concealed the painting, which Leonardo painted on wood, under his smock. But Peruggia was only 160 centimetres tall, and the Mona Lisa measures approx. 53 cm × 77 cm, so it would not fit under a smock worn by someone his size. 

Instead, he said he took off his smock and wrapped it around the painting, tucked it under his arm, and left the Louvre through the same door he had entered.

After keeping the painting hidden in a trunk in his apartment for two years, Peruggia returned to Italy with it. He kept it in his apartment in Florence, Italy for some time. However, Peruggia eventually grew impatient, and was finally caught when he contacted Alfredo Geri, the owner of an art gallery in Florence.

Geri's story conflicts with Peruggia's, but it was clear that Peruggia expected a reward for returning the painting to what he regarded as its homeland. Geri called in Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery, who authenticated the painting. Poggi and Geri, after taking the painting for safekeeping, informed the police, who arrested Peruggia at his hotel.

After its recovery, the painting was exhibited all over Italy with banner headlines rejoicing its return. The Mona Lisa was then returned to the Louvre in 1913. While the painting was famous before the theft, the notoriety it received from the newspaper headlines and the large scale police investigation helped the artwork become one of the best known in the world.

More information: NPR

There are currently two predominant theories regarding the theft of the Mona Lisa.

Peruggia said he did it for a patriotic reason: he wanted to bring the painting back for display in Italy after it was stolen by Napoleon.

Although perhaps sincere in his motive, Vincenzo may not have known that Leonardo da Vinci took this painting as a gift for Francis I when he moved to France to become a painter in his court during the 16th century, 250 years before Napoleon's birth.

The Louvre, 1911 and 2020

Experts have questioned the patriotism motive on the grounds that -if patriotism was the true motive- Peruggia would have donated the painting to an Italian museum, rather than have attempted to profit from its sale.

The question of money is also confirmed by letters that Peruggia sent to his father after the theft.

On 22 December 1911, four months after the theft, he wrote that Paris was where I will make my fortune and that his (fortune) will arrive in one shot.

The following year (1912), he wrote: I am making a vow for you to live long and enjoy the prize that your son is about to realize for you and for all our family.

Put on trial, the court agreed, to some extent, that Peruggia committed his crime for patriotic reasons and gave him a lenient sentence. He was sent to jail for one year and 15 days, but was hailed as a great patriot in Italy and served only seven months in jail.

Another theory emerged later. The theft may have been encouraged or masterminded by Eduardo de Valfierno, a con-man who had commissioned the French art forger Yves Chaudron to make copies of the painting so he could sell them as the missing original. The copies would have gone up in value if the original were stolen.

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This theory is based entirely on a 1932 article by former Hearst journalist Karl Decker in The Saturday Evening Post. Decker claimed to have known Valfierno and heard the story from him in 1913, promising not to print it until he learned of Valfierno's death. There is no external confirmation for this tale.

Peruggia was released from jail after a short time and served in the Italian army during World War I.

He later married, had one daughter, Celestina, returned to France, and continued to work as a painter decorator using his birth name Pietro Peruggia.

He died on 8 October 1925 (his 44th birthday) in the town of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France. His death was not widely reported by the media; obituaries appeared mistakenly only when another Vincenzo Peruggia died in Haute-Savoie in 1947.

More information: The Vintage News

Mona Lisa is the only beauty

who went through history

and retained her reputation.

Will Rogers

LEONARDO DA VINCI MUSEUM & LISA DEL GIOCONDO

Arriving to Leonardo da Vinci Museum

Today, Joseph de Ca'th Lon and his friends have visited one of the most popular museums of Firenze, the Leonardo da Vinci Museum.

Leonardo is one of the most important figures of the Renaissance and his works are considered masterpieces in Art, Physics, Mathematics or Engineering.

Leonardo was a genius and thanks to his inventions and his art, he is one of the most popular artists of the history. As a painter, he is well-known thanks to one of the most amazing and enigmatic pictures, the Mona Lisa, a portrait perhaps based on a real person, Lisa del Giocondo.

Before visiting the Leonardo da Vinci Museum, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 11).

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Lisa del Giocondo, née Gherardini, (June 15, 1479-July 15, 1542) was a Tuscan noblewoman and member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany. Her name was given to the Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance.

Little is known about Lisa's life. Born in Florence and married in her teens to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official, she was a mother to five children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life. Lisa outlived her husband, who was considerably her senior.

More information: Leonardo, A Universal Tuscan Genius

Centuries after Lisa's death, the Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting and took on a life separate from Lisa, the woman. Speculation by scholars and hobbyists made the work of art a globally recognized icon and an object of commercialization. In 2005, Lisa was definitively identified as the model for the Mona Lisa.

Joseph visits the Leonardo da Vinci Museum

Lisa's Florentine family was old and aristocratic but over time had lost their influence. They were well off but not wealthy, and lived on farm income in a city that was among the largest in Europe. While economically successful, there were great disparities in wealth among Florence's inhabitants.

Antonmaria di Noldo Gherardini, Lisa's father, lost two wives, Lisa di Giovanni Filippo de' Carducci, whom he married in 1465, and Caterina di Mariotto Rucellai, whom he married in 1473. Both died in childbirth. Lisa's mother was Lucrezia del Caccia, daughter of Piera Spinelli, and Gherardini's wife by his third marriage in 1476. Gherardini at one time owned or rented six farms in Chianti that produced wheat, wine and olive oil and where livestock was raised.

Lisa was born in Florence on June 15, 1479, on Via Maggio, although for many years it was thought she was born on Villa Vignamaggio just outside Greve, one of the family's rural properties. She is named for Lisa, a wife of her paternal grandfather. The eldest of seven children, Lisa had three sisters, one of whom was named Ginevra, and three brothers, Giovangualberto, Francesco, and Noldo.

More information: Visit Florence

The family lived in Florence, originally near Santa Trinita and later in rented space near Santo Spirito, most likely because they were not able to afford repairs when their first house was damaged. Lisa's family moved to what today is called Via dei Pepi, and then near Santa Croce, where they lived near Ser Piero da Vinci, Leonardo's father.

They also owned a small country home in St. Donato in the village of Poggio about 32 kilometres south of the city. Noldo, Gherardini's father and Lisa's grandfather, had bequeathed a farm in Chianti to the Santa Maria Nuova hospital. Gherardini secured a lease for another of the hospital's farms and, so that he could oversee the wheat harvest, the family spent summers there at the house named Ca' di Pesa.

On March 5, 1495, 15-year-old Lisa married Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo, a modestly successful cloth and silk merchant, becoming his third wife.

Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa

Lisa's dowry was 170 florins and the San Silvestro farm near her family's country home, which lies between Castellina and San Donato in Poggio, near two farms later owned by Michelangelo. 

The modest dowry may be a sign that the Gherardini family was not wealthy at the time and lends reason to think she and her husband loved each other. Neither poor nor among the most well-to-do in Florence, the couple lived a middle-class life.

Lisa's marriage may have increased her social status because her husband's family may have been richer than her own. Francesco is thought to have benefited because Gherardini is an old name. 

They lived in shared accommodation until March 5, 1503, when Francesco was able to buy a house next door to his family's old home in the Via della Stufa. Leonardo is thought to have begun painting Lisa's portrait the same year.

More information: Mostre di Leonardo

Lisa and Francesco had five children: Piero, Camilla, Andrea, Giocondo, and Marietta, four of them between 1496 and 1507. Lisa lost a baby daughter in 1499. Lisa also raised Bartolomeo, the son of Francesco and his first wife Camilla di Mariotto Rucellai, who was about a year old when his mother died. The second wife of Lisa's father, Caterina di Mariotto Rucellai, and Francesco's first wife were sisters, members of the prominent Rucellai family.

Camilla and Marietta became Catholic nuns. Camilla took the name Suor Beatrice and entered the convent of San Domenico di Cafaggio, where she was entrusted to the care of Antonmaria's sister Suor Albiera and Lisa's sisters Suor Camilla, who was acquitted in a scandalous visitation by four men at the convent, and Suor Alessandra. Beatrice died at age 18 and was buried in the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella.

Lisa developed a relationship with Sant'Orsola, a convent held in high regard in Florence, where she was able to place Marietta in 1521. Marietta took the name Suor Ludovica and became a respected member of the convent in a position of some responsibility.

Francesco became an official in Florence. He was elected to the Dodici Buonomini in 1499 and to the Signoria in 1512, where he was confirmed as a Priori in 1524. He may have had ties to Medici family political or business interests.

Leonardo da Vinci statue in Firenze

In 1512 when the government of Florence feared the return of the Medici from exile, Francesco was imprisoned and fined 1,000 florins. He was released in September when the Medici returned.

In June 1537 in his will among many provisions, Francesco returned Lisa's dowry to her, gave her personal clothing and jewelry and provided for her future. Upon entrusting her care to their daughter Ludovica and, should she be incapable, his son Bartolomeo, Francesco wrote, Given the affection and love of the testator towards Mona Lisa, his beloved wife; in consideration of the fact that Lisa has always acted with a noble spirit and as a faithful wife; wishing that she shall have all she needs…

More information: Museums in Florence

In one account, Francesco died in the plague of 1538. Lisa fell ill and was taken by her daughter Ludovica to the convent of Sant'Orsola, where she died on July 15, 1542, at the age of 63. In a scholarly account of their lives, Francesco was nearly 80 years old when he died, and Lisa may have lived until at least 1551, when she would have been 71 or 72.

Like other Florentines of their financial means, Francesco's family members were art lovers and patrons. His son Bartolomeo asked Antonio di Donnino Mazzieri to paint a fresco at the family's burial site in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze. Andrea del Sarto painted a Madonna for another member of his family.

Francesco gave commissions to Leonardo for a portrait of his wife and to Domenico Puligo for a painting of Saint Francis of Assisi. He is thought to have commissioned Lisa's portrait to celebrate both Andrea's birth and the purchase of the family's home.

The Mona Lisa fulfilled 15th- and early 16th century requirements for portraying a woman of virtue. Lisa is portrayed as a faithful wife through gesture -her right hand rests over her left.

Old picture in Le Louvre, Paris

Leonardo also presented Lisa as fashionable and successful, perhaps more well-off than she was. Her dark garments and black veil were Spanish-influenced high fashion; they are not a depiction of mourning for her first daughter, as some scholars have proposed.

The portrait is strikingly large; its size is equal to that of commissions acquired by wealthier art patrons of the time. This extravagance has been explained as a sign of Francesco and Lisa's social aspiration.

During the spring of 1503, Leonardo had no income source, which may in part explain his interest in a private portrait. But later that year, he most likely had to delay his work on Mona Lisa when he received payment for starting The Battle of Anghiari, which was a more valuable commission and one he was contracted to complete by February 1505.

In 1506 Leonardo considered the portrait unfinished. He was not paid for the work and did not deliver it to his client. The artist's paintings traveled with him throughout his life, and he may have completed the Mona Lisa many years later in France, in one estimation by 1516.

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The painting's title dates to 1550. An acquaintance of at least some of Francesco's family, Giorgio Vasari, wrote, Leonardo undertook to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife. The portrait's Italian name La Gioconda is the feminine form of her married name. In French it is known by the variant La Joconde. Though derived from Lisa's married name there is the added significance that the name derives from the word for happy or the happy one.

Speculation assigned Lisa's name to at least four different paintings and her identity to at least ten different people. By the end of the 20th century, the painting was a global icon that had been used in more than 300 other paintings and in 2,000 advertisements, appearing at an average of one new advertisement each week.

In 2005, an expert at the University Library of Heidelberg discovered a margin note in the library's collection that established with certainty the traditional view that the sitter was Lisa.

The note, written by Agostino Vespucci in 1503, states that Leonardo was working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. The Mona Lisa has been in custody of France since the 16th century, when it was acquired by King Francis I; after the French Revolution, however, it came into the possession of the people.

Today about six million people visit the painting each year at the Louvre in Paris, where it is part of a French national collection.

More information: Le Louvre

Nature is the source of all true knowledge.
She has her own logic, her own laws,
she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Leonardo da Vinci

LEONARDO: A UNIVERSAL TUSCAN GENIUS

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, more commonly Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519), was a Tuscan polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. 

He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter and tank, his genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.

Leonardo is the creator of universal works like Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man and Lady with an Ermine.

More information: Love From Tuscany

Learn how to see.
Realize that everything connects to everything else.

Leonardo da Vinci

FLORENCE, LEONARDO & THE HOLMES

Firenze / Florence

Florence / Firenze is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany.

Florence is famous for its history: a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages". A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy.

The Historic Centre of Florence [...] was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments.

Life offers you a thousand chances,
all you have to do is take one.

Frances Mayes