Mona Lisa Slept with Napoleon -- How She Became So Famous

For three hundred years the "Mona Lisa" was an obscure painting. Now she is the best known painting in the world. How did a overweight, eyebrowless frumpy Florentine housewife do it? It is a lesson for all you Gentlemen and Lady Gagas out there hungry for fame at all costs. Here are her secrets from the TV show "Every Picture Tells a Story" by Waldemar Januszczak Episode 6, 2004. Take notes, Mona's got it going on.

Step 1. Sleep with somebody famous.

“...the first great break for the ‘Mona Lisa’ -- the first great career move, as I would put it -- the French Revolution. What the French Revolution does, apart from minor things like abolishing the monarchy and so on, is to transform the Louvre into a museum. So at least she has gone from, you know, semi-obscurity [in the Royal collection] to a proper place.

“Another thing is Napoleon. Napoleon took a shine to many women, and one of these was ‘Mona Lisa.’ And indeed for, I think, four years, the ‘Mona Lisa’ was removed from public viewing and was in Napoleon’s bedroom.”*

Step 2. Become that obscure object of desire. 

“You know, before Napoleon carried the ‘Mona Lisa’ away to his bedroom, hardly anyone had seen her and no one thought of her as this figure of mystery and allure. She was a portrait by Leonardo and that’s it. But now that she was in the Louvre, and the Louvre was open to the public, she was ready to fall into the clutches of the public imagination. And so her ludicrous journey to global fame could finally begin...

“You won’t believe some of the silly things that began to be written about her by the feverish blokes of the 19th century... perhaps the most famous passage ever written about the ‘Mona Lisa’ by an eccentric English epicurean called Walter Pater, who was obsessed with her. ‘She is older than the rocks among which she sits,’ he gushed in 1873. ’Like a vampire, she’s been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave and been a diver in deep seas.’ It just goes on and on. I mean, this isn’t art history. This is stalking. The ‘Mona Lisa’ had begun to drive men mad.

“Thus, the ‘Mona Lisa’ entered the creative imagination of the 19th century, where she would have stayed -- famous among writers and art critics and that’s about it -- if something else hadn’t happened -- something sensational, something that turned her into a public celebrity.” **

Step 3. Become involved in a famous crime.

In August of 1911 the “Mona Lisa” was involved in a scandal. Vincenzo Perugia walked into the Louvre and kidnapped her. It was a really complicated abduction too. He took her down from the wall, strolled to the exit and stood on the corner flagging down a taxi. (Huh? Why did Pierce Brosnan work so hard in the “Thomas Crown Affair”? That’s just not how it is done in real life.) And yes... a lot of people at the Louvre got fired for their slight lapse in attention. In fact...

Step 4. Get your face in the newspapers nonstop.

For two years the “Mona Lisa” was in the papers as the press taunted the Louvre and the police for being so stupid -- and wondered, daily, where the poor lass was. (You can’t get that kind of wall to wall coverage with all the see-through dresses or low speed car chases in the world.) There was sympathy too. Everyone was pulling for the girl to show up. She was eventually found under Vincenzo’s bed in Italy. His reason for stealing her? To get her out of France and back to Florence where she belonged. Aww, it was like a heart warming Benji movie -- but without that damn barking. In true Disney happy-ending-fashion, the sympathetic Italians gave Vincenzo just one year in prison and the “Mona Lisa” achieved the fame she has never lost since.

[By the way, it is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini. (No recent photo available.) So you should address the lady as Madonna Lisa. But of course the papers spelt her name wrong, as they always do. She is now the “Mona Lisa.”]

“There is not a single moment when the Mona Lisa becomes the world’s most famous painting. There are building blocks. There are stepping-stones. Though being in Paris is an important thing. Being painted by a Renaissance genius is quite important. Being a femme fatale or being described as a castrating woman would do you no harm. Being stolen was a great stroke of luck. Being mocked by Futurist and avant-garde artists was also very important. And being regularly exploited by the advertising industry in order to sell everything from fridge magnets, hotels and flights -- even condoms. You know, all that is a tremendous asset for a girl.” *


* Donald Sassoon, Art Historian. From the TV program “Every Picture Tells a Story” Episode 6, 2004.
**Waldemar Januszczak. From the TV program “Every Picture Tells a Story” Episode 6, 2004.