Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Guess what will?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: Mango? So I'm trying to write a poem for the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa and I need little help. Rhyme Zone says
Speaker 1: there's no perfect rhyme for Mona Lisa. So what do
Speaker 1: you think rhyme's best? Like amnesia anesthesia or moesha? Wait, Mango?
Speaker 2: First of all, why are you writing Mona Lisa poem?
Speaker 1: Because even though there are over a million pieces of
Speaker 1: art in the Louver, the Mona Lisa is the only
Speaker 1: one who actually receives her own mail, and people have
Speaker 1: been writing to the Mona Lisa since the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: She even has her own mailbox because the painting is
Speaker 1: so enchanting. So I'm curious, So, like, what what do
Speaker 1: people actually write? Some of the letters express how moved
Speaker 1: people are by the artwork, and some ask the smirking
Speaker 1: Beauty for advice, and some of the letters actually include
Speaker 1: marriage proposals.
Speaker 2: It is pretty incredible. I love that people have a
Speaker 2: parasocial relationship with a piece of art. I think it's
Speaker 2: the first time I've heard about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it used to be For years you actually
Speaker 1: have to make a trip to the Louver to pass
Speaker 1: along your fan mail tour. But these days you can
Speaker 1: actually post a letter to the museid Louver Service de
Speaker 1: public Attention day Mona Lisa, which I've obviously said in
Speaker 1: a perfect franch accent, and you nailed it, Mango, So
Speaker 1: I figure, why not add to the file.
Speaker 2: Well, in that case, maybe try rhyming Mona Lisa with
Speaker 2: milk of Magnesia, Mango.
Speaker 1: That's where you would have an answer for me. So
Speaker 1: why don't we put the poetry aside for a moment
Speaker 1: and dive into today's episode, which is all about the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa.
Speaker 2: Hey, their podcast listeners. I'm Will Pearson and as always
Speaker 2: I'm here with my good friend Mango and sitting behind
Speaker 2: that big booth that's our powd Dylan. Now, Mango, I
Speaker 2: know I got here a little bit before you did,
Speaker 2: but Dylan was already here. I think he had clocked
Speaker 2: in a good half hour before I even sat down,
Speaker 2: and he's been holding that weird smile Mona Lisa's style
Speaker 2: for the last hour.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: It's really impressive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird, but it's also really captivating. It's also
Speaker 1: crazy that he shaved his eyebrows. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: spot on to the Mona Lisa. But that's just the
Speaker 1: links to Dylan goes to for these bits. It's truly impressive. Anyway, mego,
Speaker 1: let's dive in here. So what is it about the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa that is so captivating? Like?
Speaker 2: Why do people stand in lines to get into the
Speaker 2: louver just so they can stand in this huge crowd
Speaker 2: and try to see this painting? Is it just her
Speaker 2: smile or like what is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So obviously it's not just the smile. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's a super good painting, which I believe is a
Speaker 1: direct quote from our forum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, I think, I think I remember seeing
Speaker 2: that quote. But what makes the painting so unique? Well,
Speaker 2: to start with, most sixteenth.
Speaker 1: Century portraits of nobility showed off their social status and
Speaker 1: their wealth with a lot of like flamboyant clothing. So
Speaker 1: the painting's also played up hair styles and accessories. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you've seen the Mona Lisa, which is
Speaker 1: believed to be this Italian noble Lisa del Giacondo, it's
Speaker 1: unique because she's dressed really simply, all of which draws
Speaker 1: most of the attention straight to her face and that
Speaker 1: weird smile. Yeah, but there's also other stuff, right, So,
Speaker 1: typical Italian portraiture used full figure poses, but Mona Lisa
Speaker 1: is painted in this revolutionary three fourths length pose. Also,
Speaker 1: she's not stoic or demure, which would be typical of
Speaker 1: a female portrait. She's she's turning slightly toward the viewer
Speaker 1: and she meets our eyes directly like a man typically would,
Speaker 1: or a man at the time. And Modalsa also showcases
Speaker 1: some very vincy techniques. What would those be? Yeah? What
Speaker 1: is this technique called sfumtu, which means vanished or evaporated. Basically,
Speaker 1: Leonardo would create these imperceptible transitions between light and dark
Speaker 1: by shading the colors really gradually so that the background
Speaker 1: fades into the distance. It's almost like adding a blur filter.
Speaker 1: And it's another deviation from traditional Italian portraiture of the time,
Speaker 1: which would paint the backgrounds in this same sharp focus
Speaker 1: as the central figure. Actually, is this fuma to also
Speaker 1: a drink. Yeah, it's in a marrow, which makes sense
Speaker 1: because if you drink enough smatu, things are going to
Speaker 1: get faded into the background.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want to say sfumatu over and over.
Speaker 2: But this is all cool, But I do think we
Speaker 2: should get back to the Mona Lisa's weird smile. I
Speaker 2: know I keep bringing it up, but I feel like
Speaker 2: we have to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the smile that launched a mediocre two thousand
Speaker 1: and three movie Emego.
Speaker 2: It's sixty percent on rotten Tomato, so I would say,
Speaker 2: I don't sleep on it.
Speaker 1: So I was up.
Speaker 2: I just, you know, I like to know what it
Speaker 2: gets on rotten tomatoes. But I also looked into Mona
Speaker 2: Lisa's smile and it's amazing. Like the preoccupation with the
Speaker 2: painting smile dates back to the Renaissance writer and historian
Speaker 2: Giorgio Vasari, and he actually said, in this work of Leonardo,
Speaker 2: there was a smile so pleasing that it was a
Speaker 2: thing more divine than human to behold, and it was
Speaker 2: held to be something marvelous in that it was alive,
Speaker 2: which sounds spooky. It sounds spooky, But he also wasn't
Speaker 2: the only one that was so captivated here. So the
Speaker 2: treacherous attraction of Moasia's smile is said to have consumed
Speaker 2: French artist Luke Maspero too. According to popular myth, Maspero
Speaker 2: allegedly ended his life over it. We actually leapt from
Speaker 2: the I know it's crazy. He actually leapt from the
Speaker 2: fourth story window of his Paris hotel room, and in
Speaker 2: the note he left behind, he wrote, for years I
Speaker 2: have grappled desperately with her smile. I prefer to die.
Speaker 1: That's so dramatic, you know, you know, why would a
Speaker 1: smile and a painting drive someone so crazy? It it
Speaker 1: feels ludicrous.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what, there's actually some science here, like,
Speaker 2: there are explanations for it. Some people who look at
Speaker 2: the painting think she's not smiling at all, and that's
Speaker 2: because the human eye uses two types of vision. There's
Speaker 2: fobial and there's peripheral. Now, fobial or direct vision is
Speaker 2: excellent at picking up detail, but is less suited to
Speaker 2: picking up things like shadows, and so, according to Margaret Livingstone,
Speaker 2: a professor at Harvard Quote, the elusive quality of the
Speaker 2: Mona Lisa smile can be explained by the fact that
Speaker 2: her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies and
Speaker 2: so is seen best by your peripheral vision. It's almost
Speaker 2: like an optical illusion, like the more a person stares
Speaker 2: straight ahead, the less their peripheral vision actually works.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really cool. So I'm at the I'm staring
Speaker 1: at the Mona Lisa because I want to take it
Speaker 1: all in and get my money's worth. But the harder
Speaker 1: I stare, the harder it is for my vision to
Speaker 1: register that smile.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. And it's only when you start looking
Speaker 2: at other parts of the painting, like the background or
Speaker 2: hands or the chair, that's when your eyes really pick
Speaker 2: up on the smile, which could sort of strike you
Speaker 2: as alive, right because it's not there, and it suddenly
Speaker 2: appears like Mona Lisa is finally deigned to smile at you,
Speaker 2: the sweaty jet lag tourists who's come all the way
Speaker 2: to friends to see her. I mean, that's the theory, Mango.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is that I'm really glad you
Speaker 1: mentioned the chair. Wait, chair?
Speaker 2: What did I say about the chair? I don't think
Speaker 2: I said anything about the chair, did I.
Speaker 1: Just that it exists? It trikes out chair. The chair
Speaker 1: is one of the most interesting parts of the Mona Lisa,
Speaker 1: and one that art historians actually focus on. Specifically, it's
Speaker 1: a pozetto chair, which means little well, which some historians
Speaker 1: believe is a reference to the amphibious nature of Mona Lisa.
Speaker 1: She's surrounded by water, she's wearing this green dress, and
Speaker 1: if you know she's sitting on a little well, you
Speaker 1: could imagine the rivers behind her are flowing into her.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: It's obviously a rich and surprising and ingeniously conceived work
Speaker 2: of art. But here's what I've always been stuck on
Speaker 2: with the Mona Lisa. Like the Renaissance had I don't
Speaker 2: know if you know this, but a lot of really
Speaker 2: super good paintings mego, which.
Speaker 1: Also sounds like a quote from Art Forum.
Speaker 2: Straight from it. But seriously, I've always wondered what made
Speaker 2: the Mona Lisa stick out amongst all this amazing art,
Speaker 2: And through our research, I finally found the answer, Mango,
Speaker 2: it's the vibes.
Speaker 1: Vibes, Yeah, yeah, well, the vibes and incredible marketing, like
Speaker 1: the Mona Lisa is like the Jeremy Allen White of
Speaker 1: Renaissance paintings. I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 2: All right, well, hear me out on this. So even
Speaker 2: before it was in the loop. The Mona Lisa started
Speaker 2: out hot like it had this great pedigree. It was
Speaker 2: in the royal collection of the literal King of France,
Speaker 2: Francis I, and who's court Leonardo spent the last years
Speaker 2: of his life. The painting was there for centuries until
Speaker 2: the French Revolution claimed the royal collection as the property
Speaker 2: of the people. Then Napoleon took it and placed it
Speaker 2: in his bedroom because he loved it that much, and
Speaker 2: then finally it landed in the Louver. Sure, so there's
Speaker 2: like a lot of history there of being owned by
Speaker 2: important people. But it was also the heat around Leonardo
Speaker 2: dventually that helped grow interest in the Mona Lisa, because
Speaker 2: something happened in the nineteenth century where Leonardo became more popular,
Speaker 2: you know, see, not only as a very good painter,
Speaker 2: but also as a great scientist an inventor of course,
Speaker 2: and many of his so called inventions were later debunked,
Speaker 2: and his contributions to science and architecture came to be
Speaker 2: seen as you know, less than they might have been
Speaker 2: at first. But this idea of Leonardo as a genius
Speaker 2: has continued well into the twenty first century, and that
Speaker 2: of course has contributed to the Mona Lisa's popularity. But
Speaker 2: then there was Marcel Duchamp's contribution to the painting.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about Deschamp. The data is too, you know,
Speaker 1: made all that fun crazy art, like signed that urinal
Speaker 1: and entered it into an art exhibition.
Speaker 2: Back guy, Yeah, very same guy. So Duchamp took a
Speaker 2: postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa. This was back in
Speaker 2: nineteen nineteen. He drew a beard and mustache on it.
Speaker 2: It was like this playful depiction. It was meant to
Speaker 2: be in irreverent commentary about the worship of art. But
Speaker 2: he also wrote lhoo q across the bottom of the postcard.
Speaker 1: Which sounds like, look right, is that? What's I mean? Exactly?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a vulgar phrase for I guess you could
Speaker 2: say she's hot, But the polite translation is there is
Speaker 2: fire down below, got it? You've never written that on anything.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: The depiction of the Mona Lisa became a huge thing
Speaker 2: to deface of this revered work of art as commentary,
Speaker 2: and before a long other artists followed suit and distorted disfigure.
Speaker 2: They played with rep reductions of the Mona Lisa, including
Speaker 2: Andy Warhol, actually, over decades, as technology improved, the painting
Speaker 2: was endlessly reproduced, sometimes manipulated, sometimes not, and so her
Speaker 2: face became one of the most well known in the world,
Speaker 2: even to people who don't really care about art.
Speaker 1: Right, so, I may have never been to the Louver
Speaker 1: or never even heard of Leo da Vinci, But by
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, even if I hate art, it's hard
Speaker 1: to avoid the Mona Lisa's presence.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. In fact, in the nineteen sixties and seventies,
Speaker 2: the Mona Lisa was so famous she went on tour.
Speaker 2: She traveled to the US and a first class cabin
Speaker 2: on an ocean liner threw about forty thousand people a
Speaker 2: day to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and
Speaker 2: then in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: And then after that she went on to Japan.
Speaker 1: And of course the popularity was only increased by that
Speaker 1: heist too, right, wait, there was a heist. It is
Speaker 1: really really fun, But why don't we take a quick
Speaker 1: break before we get to that.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're discussing the
Speaker 2: Mona Lisa and Mango. You were just telling us about
Speaker 2: an art theft involving da Vinci's most famous painting.
Speaker 1: Is that right? That's right. So in nineteen eleven, the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa had made it to the Louver, a huge
Speaker 1: museum in Paris, literally huge like. At the time, the
Speaker 1: Louver was the largest building in the world, with more
Speaker 1: than a thousand rooms spread out over forty five acres.
Speaker 2: Can you believe, Oh my gosh, that's ridiculous. So what
Speaker 2: is the heating bill on a place like that? Can
Speaker 2: you imagine?
Speaker 1: Nothing? Because it's France, so it's just cold, all right,
Speaker 1: A good point, that's fair. Anyways, it was a quiet
Speaker 1: Monday morning in Paris on the twenty first of August
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, and three men were hurrying out of the Louver,
Speaker 1: which is odd that the museum was closed to visitors
Speaker 1: on Mondays. The men were Vincenzo Perusia and the brothers,
Speaker 1: Vincenzo and Michelle Lancelotti. They're these young Italian handymen. They
Speaker 1: had come to the Louver on Sunday afternoon, hidden overnight
Speaker 1: in a storeroom near the Salon care A gallery of
Speaker 1: Renaissance paintings, and then in the morning wearing white workmen's smocks,
Speaker 1: they went into the salon and seized a small painting
Speaker 1: off the wall. They ripped off the glass, shadow box
Speaker 1: and frame, and then they went to a stairwell and
Speaker 1: Perusia hid the painting under his clothes, and then they
Speaker 1: slipped out of the gallery down a back stairwell, threw
Speaker 1: a side entrance and onto the streets of Paris. And
Speaker 1: so they stole the Mona Lisa. Yeah, they stole the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa. It took twenty six hours before the louver
Speaker 1: staff even noticed that it was missing. You have to
Speaker 1: remember how big the louver is, right, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven there were fewer than one hundred and fifty guards
Speaker 1: looking out for all of that art.
Speaker 2: I'm curious, So, like, how did they plan it and
Speaker 2: why did they steal it? Like, give me the Ocean's
Speaker 2: ta plot here mango.
Speaker 1: Before in nineteen ten, a letter was mailed to the
Speaker 1: louver from Vienna which threatened the Mona Lisa. So museum
Speaker 1: officials hired a firm named Kobie to put a dozen
Speaker 1: of its most prized paintings under glass, and the work
Speaker 1: took three months, and one of the men assigned to
Speaker 1: the project was Vincenzo Perusia who was one of the
Speaker 1: thieves and Prussia was this Italian worker on a French
Speaker 1: construction crew, so they teased him a lot. Prusia later
Speaker 1: testified in court that they quote almost always called me
Speaker 1: Manja Macaroni or Macaroni eater, and very often they stole
Speaker 1: my personal property and salted my wine. So he was
Speaker 1: getting bull at this French crew. Yeah, and you took
Speaker 1: it personally. And some accounts say Prusia was motivated by
Speaker 1: national pride and he wanted to repatriate Mona Lisa to Italy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there there was this media explosion when the Louver announced
Speaker 1: the theft. Newspaper headlines were all over the place, you know,
Speaker 1: wanted posters for the painting were hung on Regian walls,
Speaker 1: and crowds masked at police headquarters. And when the Louver
Speaker 1: actually reopened after a week, thousands of spectators, including Franz Kafka,
Speaker 1: flooded into the salon to stare at the empty wall
Speaker 1: where the Mona Lisa had once been. An empty people
Speaker 1: are so weird, like why would people line up to
Speaker 1: stare at a blank wall? I mean the grief was remarkable, right,
Speaker 1: like the national outpouring. According to historians, mimicked the shock
Speaker 1: of Princess Diana's death and where was the actual painting
Speaker 1: being kept during all of this? So Prusia had squirreled
Speaker 1: the Mona Lisa away in this false bottom of a
Speaker 1: wooden trunk in his room at a boardinghouse. And when
Speaker 1: the Parisian police interrogated him as part of all their interviews,
Speaker 1: because they basically interviewed everyone who was working at the
Speaker 1: louver at the time, he said he only learned about
Speaker 1: the theft from the newspapers and that the reason he
Speaker 1: was late to work that Monday in August was that
Speaker 1: he had drunk too much the night before and overslept.
Speaker 1: But Prusia ultimately wanted money for this world famous painting,
Speaker 1: so he twenty eight months, and then in December nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: he left that boarding house with the trunk and he
Speaker 1: took a train to Florence, where he tried to offload
Speaker 1: the painting to an art dealer, who promptly called the police.
Speaker 1: He then had a brief trial in Florence, pleaded guilty,
Speaker 1: and ended up serving just eight months in prison. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it's a fairly happy ending of the story, then, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the painting actually went on tour in Italy briefly
Speaker 1: before it got sent back to France, but that theft
Speaker 1: made the Mona Lisa a global icon. In the first
Speaker 1: two days after it was rehung in the Louvers Salon,
Speaker 1: more than one hundred thousand people viewed it, and today
Speaker 1: eight million people see the Mona Lisa every single year.
Speaker 2: Wow, it does feel like Prusia should have gotten like
Speaker 2: this pr fee or something like that for boosting the
Speaker 2: Mona Lisa's profile.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but weirdly, you know, there are actually some conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: So some said that theft was the French government's way
Speaker 1: of trying to distract the public opinion from uprisings in
Speaker 1: colonial West Africa. A few months before the was found,
Speaker 1: the New York Times speculated that the Louver Restores had
Speaker 1: botched a restoration job and that the museum was just
Speaker 1: like concocting this story to cover that up. There was
Speaker 1: also a rumor that a gang of international art thieves
Speaker 1: had poached the painting and substituted a fake that was
Speaker 1: in Perusia's possession when he was caught, which is all
Speaker 1: kind of incredible. Whoa really. Yeah, And apparently this Argentinian
Speaker 1: also confessed to masterminding the crime. He did this to
Speaker 1: American reporter named Carl Decker. He basically said he paid
Speaker 1: Perusia and the other two men to steal the painting
Speaker 1: because the glass box that protected it weighed two hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: so you needed a few men on the job. And
Speaker 1: then he said he had six forgeries made and sold
Speaker 1: to private collectors. So for a while there was some
Speaker 1: question of whether the Mona Lisa and the Louver was
Speaker 1: the real deal. And then the other conspiracy theory around
Speaker 1: the theft was this whole you know Picasso thing.
Speaker 2: Wait what Picasso thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of incredible. So during that eighteen month
Speaker 1: period where the French police were not arrested the dudes
Speaker 1: who actually stole the Mona Lisa, they arrested Pablo Picasso
Speaker 1: and the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire. It started when
Speaker 1: this guy, Joseph Gary Pierre went to the Paris Journal
Speaker 1: and told them that for the past several years he'd
Speaker 1: been stealing and then selling minor artwork from the Louver,
Speaker 1: and to prove it, Pire produced a small statue that
Speaker 1: the Louver curators confirmed with museums, and the police eventually
Speaker 1: connected Piree to Apollinaire, who was a member of Picasso's
Speaker 1: modernist entourage. They were called labond de Picasso, and there
Speaker 1: were this like group of artistic firebrands known around town
Speaker 1: as the wild Men of Paris. And it wasn't really
Speaker 1: that big a stretch for the police to assume this
Speaker 1: ring of art thieves were sophisticated enough to swipe the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa. Of course, neither Apollinaire nor Picasso had played
Speaker 1: any part in that painting's disappearance.
Speaker 2: All right, So Picasso and his buddies didn't steal the
Speaker 2: Mona Lisa. They were innocent.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the funny thing is they weren't exactly innocent.
Speaker 1: Pierre was telling the truth that Picasso had bought stolen
Speaker 1: statues from him and kept them buried in this cupboard
Speaker 1: in his Paris apartment, and you know, later the hardest
Speaker 1: pretended ignorance, like he didn't know they were stolen. But
Speaker 1: at the bottom of every statue it was stamped in
Speaker 1: bold property of de Louver.
Speaker 2: That's not a good look.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it got weirder because when pire got put
Speaker 1: on trial, it kind of ended up being like this
Speaker 1: massive farce. Picasso and his friends confessed to putting their
Speaker 1: stolen statues in this old suitcase and almost throwing the
Speaker 1: bag into the Seine before realizing they couldn't destroy this
Speaker 1: incredible art. So upon Air confesses to everything on the stand,
Speaker 1: but he also throws in a lot of lies, and Picasso,
Speaker 1: who normally liked to project, you know, a supermasho image,
Speaker 1: he breaks down and weeps and also says a lot
Speaker 1: of nonsense, and it all confuses the judge and he
Speaker 1: gets baffled by the whole thing, and then ultimately just
Speaker 1: dismisses the men with a warning. But because's involvement obviously
Speaker 1: only brought the Mona Lisa more press, that is so funny,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, let's take a moment to talk about
Speaker 1: who the Mona Lisa actually is. Like, who is this
Speaker 1: woman whose portrait has been reproduced a ridiculous amount of
Speaker 1: times for five hundred plus years. Yeah, it's funny because
Speaker 1: I feel like there used to be a real mystery
Speaker 1: about who the Mona Lisa was.
Speaker 2: That's right, But back in two thousand and eight at
Speaker 2: German University found conclusive evidence that it's Lisa Gherdini del
Speaker 2: ja Condo dated notes from October fifteen oh three, scribbled
Speaker 2: in the margins of a book at Heidelberg University's library.
Speaker 2: They confirmed that Lisa del Jacondo was indeed the model
Speaker 2: and her husband was most likely the man who commissioned
Speaker 2: the portrait. The comments comparare Leonardo to the ancient Greek
Speaker 2: artist at Pelis, and said he was working on three
Speaker 2: paintings at the time, one of them a portrait of
Speaker 2: Lisa del Jacondo.
Speaker 1: Which sounds pretty conclusive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say at c like for almost any
Speaker 2: given fact or assertion about the Mona Lisa, there is someone,
Speaker 2: often with the fancy Tyler degree who disputes it, of course,
Speaker 2: like anything. But probably the only thing everyone can agree
Speaker 2: on is that it's rectangular. But let's go with the
Speaker 2: Lisa del Jacondo theory for just a minute. Like, there's
Speaker 2: been this long standing theory that Lisa was or had
Speaker 2: recently been pregnant when she's set for this portrait, and
Speaker 2: in two thousand and four, a series of three D
Speaker 2: scans essentially confirmed this. The scans showed this fine gauzy
Speaker 2: veil around Mona Lisa's shoulders, this garment that women of
Speaker 2: the Italian and Renaissance were when they were expecting it's
Speaker 2: called a guamelo. Well, couldn't we just see the veil
Speaker 2: by looking at the painting? Like, why do we need
Speaker 2: three D scans of all of us? Actually, the scans
Speaker 2: have been able to tell us a whole lot. Like
Speaker 2: for a while, there was this big question over whether
Speaker 2: the Mona Lisa didn't have eyelashes or eyebrows, and there
Speaker 2: was a debate over whether it was just the fashion
Speaker 2: at the time or whether maybe leoni Ardo never actually
Speaker 2: finished the painting. But an engineer named Pascal Cote used
Speaker 2: the scans to reveal traces of the Mona Lisa's left
Speaker 2: brow and basically that the lashes have been obliterated both
Speaker 2: by time and this long ago restoration. Also, the scans
Speaker 2: showed that da Vinci changed his mind about two fingers
Speaker 2: on Lisa's left hand and how they were going to
Speaker 2: be placed in the painting, and that her face was
Speaker 2: originally a little bit wider and the smile more prominent.
Speaker 2: So it's really actually a lot that they can tell
Speaker 2: from these scans. That's incredible.
Speaker 1: I had no idea you could like sort of see
Speaker 1: beneath the painting to all those layers, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really really cool. But you know your question
Speaker 2: about the veil. As the Mona Lisa aged, her veil
Speaker 2: darkened and it made it harder to see. But with
Speaker 2: the confirmation of the veil, historians were able to confirm
Speaker 2: that Francesco del Jacondo asked for the painting of his
Speaker 2: wife to celebrate the birth of his second.
Speaker 1: Son, which confirms that Mona Lisa is his wife, Lisa
Speaker 1: del Giaconda.
Speaker 2: That's right, actually his third wife to be exact. So
Speaker 2: in fourteen ninety five, at the age of fifteen, Lisa
Speaker 2: Gardini married prosperous silk and cloth merchant Francisco di Bartolomeo
Speaker 2: di Zenobi del Jacondo. It's a mouthful there, but it's
Speaker 2: a pretty awesome name. Lisa and Francesco ended up having
Speaker 2: five children, Piero, Camilla, Andrea Jacondo and Marietta. So that's
Speaker 2: the Lisa in the Mona Lisa allegedly. Don't tell me
Speaker 2: you're getting into conspiracy talk here, Mango.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to end this episode on a crazy note.
Speaker 1: So did you know that some people believe there are
Speaker 1: two Mona Lisas. Oh, who Basically, there's this painting that
Speaker 1: looks a lot like the Mona Lisa. It's a painting
Speaker 1: of a younger woman, kind of like uh fresher, younger
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa, with dark hair and an enigmatic smile that
Speaker 1: sits at a slight angle in front of a panoramic landscape,
Speaker 1: which obviously sounds familiar. It's called the Aleworth Mona Lisa,
Speaker 1: and long story short, it got passed around different art
Speaker 1: collectors over the centuries, including American collector Henry F. Pulitzer.
Speaker 1: Pulitzer published a book arguing that the Aleworth picture was
Speaker 1: in fact Leonardo's only real portrait of Mona Lisa. The
Speaker 1: way did Leonardo actually paint this one? I mean, some
Speaker 1: people think so, namely the Mona Lisa Foundation, who have
Speaker 1: a vested interest in, you know, furthering this theory, but
Speaker 1: most art scholars don't believe. So it's painted on canvas,
Speaker 1: and Leonardo usually painted on wood, and they basically say
Speaker 1: that it's just not good enough to be by Leonardo
Speaker 1: da Vinci. It's just like a bad copy of the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa. But speaking of bad copy, what do you
Speaker 1: say we get into the fact of.
Speaker 2: Aw I like what you did there, manga, Let's do it.
Speaker 1: All right. So, one of the strangest things about the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa is that it's been attacked. A bunch in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six threw a rock at it, which chipped
Speaker 1: the subject's left elbow. Over the years, people have thrown
Speaker 1: acid on it, They've tried to face it with spray paint,
Speaker 1: They've thrown a mug at it, and weirdest of all,
Speaker 1: it had a cake thrown in its face as recently
Speaker 1: as twenty twenty two. That is so weird and disheartening,
Speaker 1: you know. According to a book by Diane Hales, over
Speaker 1: the years, the Mona Lisa has launched a number of
Speaker 1: fashion trends, and this is what she writes. Quote Society
Speaker 1: women adopted the Mona Lisa's look by dusting yellow powder
Speaker 1: on their faces and necks to suggest her golden complexion,
Speaker 1: and immobilizing their facial muscles to mimic her smile, which
Speaker 1: sounds like an early imitation of botox. Also quote. In
Speaker 1: Parisian cabarets, dancers dressed as Laja Conde, the French name
Speaker 1: for Mona Lisa, and performed a saucy can can.
Speaker 2: All right, that's pretty good. All right, Well, did you
Speaker 2: know in trying to figure out who the Mona Lisa was,
Speaker 2: scientists have actually dug up bones beneath the convent in Florence.
Speaker 2: Apparently one of Lisa's daughters became a nun and in
Speaker 2: her old age she moved into the convent with her daughter.
Speaker 2: So scientists went digging beneath this chapel. They found bones
Speaker 2: that do match up timeline wise with Lisa's death, but
Speaker 2: they were hoping to use digital imaging on the skeleton
Speaker 2: to compare it to the painting. But apparently there was
Speaker 2: no skull found with the bones, and that means her
Speaker 2: face couldn't actually be digitally reconstructed.
Speaker 1: So here's a fun one. To keep his subject smiling
Speaker 1: or half smiling, Da Vinci had a whole bag of tricks.
Speaker 1: He apparently employed six musicians to perform for her, had
Speaker 1: people reading stories out loud to her, and also had
Speaker 1: a fluffy white cat and a greyhound dog for her
Speaker 1: to play with on set. All right, will people often
Speaker 1: speculate how much the Mona Lisa is worse. Back in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, when the painting went on tour, the
Speaker 1: price was placed at about one hundred million dollars, which
Speaker 1: is around eight hundred and thirty four million dollars in
Speaker 1: today's currency, but others estimated it's actually worth more. One
Speaker 1: Entre Dour placed it in the billions of dollars because
Speaker 1: of its value to France and the amount of tourism
Speaker 1: the painting generates. Of course, all of that is actually
Speaker 1: mood because it's illegal to buy or sell the Mona
Speaker 1: Lisa in France. I love that they made it illegal
Speaker 1: to to buy its.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't try it.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I wanted to understand was
Speaker 1: why the Mona Lisa ended up in France. And apparently
Speaker 1: Leonardo had started painting Lisa in Italy, but when his patron,
Speaker 1: the Medici, the brother of Pope Leo the ten, died,
Speaker 1: he wasn't getting commissions in Italy. So you know, the
Speaker 1: French were very welcoming. They praised his genius, so he
Speaker 1: moves there. But some of the first damage to the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa actually happened early on. It happened when King
Speaker 1: Francis the First owned the painting. He hung it in
Speaker 1: his bathing suite where the steam actually dulled the color.
Speaker 1: And when a restorer tried to preserve the color by
Speaker 1: putting the lacquer on it, he permanently dulled it. All right, well,
Speaker 1: here's one to close it out, mango. Did you know
Speaker 1: that there is a scientist who claims to have figured
Speaker 1: out what the Mona Lisa actually sounded like. This was
Speaker 1: part of a promotion for the Japanese version of The
Speaker 1: da Vinci Code. Montsumi Suzuki used the measurement from the
Speaker 1: painting's face and hands to figure out how big her
Speaker 1: skull would have been, also to determine her height about
Speaker 1: five foot six inches. Then they used data simulation to
Speaker 1: recreate the vocal cords to figure out her pitch and
Speaker 1: apparently the voice is somewhat deep. Now, we also figured
Speaker 1: out what Leonardo da Vinci's voice sounded like, and apparently
Speaker 1: it was super nasal. I love that. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: wonder if knowing that da Vinci was nasal helps, you know,
Speaker 1: help sell tickets for the movie. But whatever the case,
Speaker 1: the fact is so good it makes me want to
Speaker 1: give you this week's trophy. And also I'm thinking we
Speaker 1: should stop the fact off just to get Dylan some
Speaker 1: rogaine for his eyebrows, because totally they went above and beyond.
Speaker 2: I mean, he just tries so hard that Dylan. All right, well,
Speaker 2: that's it for this week's Part Time Genius. To remember.
Speaker 2: If you want to tell us anything about the show,
Speaker 2: if you want to ask us questions, send in your
Speaker 2: own poems about the Mona Lisa, just email our mothers
Speaker 2: at PT genius Moms at gmail dot com. That's the letter,
Speaker 2: p the letter T.
Speaker 1: Genius Moms at gmail dot com. They'll make sure we
Speaker 1: get the message. Mang.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you knew we created this email address,
Speaker 2: but it's it's pretty amazing, So send us notes here.
Speaker 2: That's right, Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongastikler
Speaker 1: and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan. What's
Speaker 1: the from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for
Speaker 1: iHeart by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media
Speaker 1: support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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