WEBVTT - Did Picasso try to Steal the Mona Lisa? 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:06.680 You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:14.760 and iHeartRadio. Guess what will? What's that? Mango? So I'm 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:17.320 trying to write a poem for the Mona Lisa and 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:21.320 I need little help. Rhyme Zone says there's no perfect 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.280 rhyme for Mona Lisa. So what do you think rhyme's best? 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:30.360 Like amnesia anesthesia or moesha? Wait, Mango? First of all, 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:33.840 why are you writing Mona Lisa poem? Because even though 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.200 there are over a million pieces of art in the Louver, 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:39.279 the Mona Lisa is the only one who actually receives 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:41.320 her own mail, and people have been writing to the 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:44.959 Mona Lisa since the nineteenth century. She even has her 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:49.960 own mailbox because the painting is so enchanting. So I'm curious, So, like, 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:52.760 what what do people actually write? Some of the letters 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:55.480 express how moved people are by the artwork, and some 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:59.040 ask the smirking Beauty for advice, and some of the 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.640 letters actually include marriage proposals. 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:04.160 It is pretty incredible. I love that people have a 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:06.800 parasocial relationship with a piece of art. I think it's 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:08.240 the first time I've heard about this. 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:11.000 Yeah, and it used to be. For years you actually 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:12.520 have to make a trip to the Louver to pass 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:14.840 along your fan mail tour. But these days you can 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:18.560 actually post a letter to the museid Louver service de 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:22.800 public attention dey Mona Lisa, which I've obviously said in 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:27.319 a perfect franch accent. You nailed it, Mango, So I figure, 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:28.440 why not add to the file. 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:31.280 Well, in that case, maybe try rhyming Mona Lisa with 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:33.320 milk of Magnesia, Mango. 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:35.920 That's where you would have an answer for me. So 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:38.360 why don't we put the poetry aside for a moment 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.800 and dive into today's episode, which is all about the 0:01:41.800 --> 0:02:02.240 Mona Lisa. 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:06.200 Hey, their podcast listeners, I'm Will Pearson and as always 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:08.920 I'm here with my good friend Mango and sitting behind 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:12.320 that big booth that's our powd Dylan. Now, Mango, I 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:14.240 know I got here a little bit before you did, 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.200 but Dylan was already here. I think he had clocked 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:19.640 in a good half hour before I even sat down, 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.760 and he's been holding that weird smile Mona Lisa's style for. 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:27.680 The last hour. Now. It's really impressive. Yeah, it's weird, 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:31.120 but it's also really captivating. It's also crazy that he 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:34.120 shaved his eyebrows. I mean, it's just spot on to 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.600 the Mona Lisa. But that's just the links to Dylan 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.640 goes to for these bits. It's truly impressive. Anyway, mego, 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:43.400 let's dive in here. So what is it about the 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:46.000 Mona Lisa that is so captivating? Like? 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:48.240 Why do people stand in lines to get into the 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:51.440 louver just so they can stand in this huge crowd 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.680 and try to see this painting? Is it just her 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:56.160 smile or like what is it? 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.839 Yeah? So obviously it's not just the smile. First of all, 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.920 it's a super good painting, which I believe is a 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:04.720 direct quote from our forum. 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:07.360 Yeah, I think, I think, I think I remember seeing 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.840 that quote. But what makes the painting so unique? Well, 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:12.720 to start with, most sixteenth. 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.680 Century portraits of nobility showed off their social status and 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.520 their wealth with a lot of like flamboyant clothing. So 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.520 the painting's also played up hair styles and accessories. But 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:24.120 you know, if you've seen the Mona Lisa, which is 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:28.040 believed to be this Italian noble Lisa del Giacondo, it's 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:31.520 unique because she's dressed really simply, all of which draws 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:34.040 most of the attention straight to her face and that 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.000 weird smile. Yeah, but there's also other stuff, right, So, 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:41.280 typical Italian portraiture used full figure poses, but Mona Lisa 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:45.160 is painted in this revolutionary three fourths length pose. Also, 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.320 she's not stoic or demure, which would be typical of 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:52.600 a female portrait. She's she's turning slightly toward the viewer 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:55.880 and she meets our eyes directly like a man typically would, 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:58.680 or a man at the time. And mod Lisa also 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:04.040 showcases some very vinci techniques. What would those be? Yeah? 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:09.960 What is this technique called sfumtu, which means vanished or evaporated. Basically, 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:14.200 Leonardo would create these imperceptible transitions between light and dark 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.480 by shading the colors really gradually so that the background 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:20.800 fades into the distance. It's almost like adding a blur filter. 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:24.919 And it's another deviation from traditional Italian portraiture of the time, 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:28.560 which would paint the backgrounds in this same sharp focus 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.599 as the central figure. Actually, is this fuma to also 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:36.000 a drink. Yeah, it's in a marrow, which makes sense 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:38.720 because if you drink enough smatu, things are going to 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:40.480 get faded into the background. 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:43.360 Yeah, I just want to say it's Fu Matu over 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:45.680 and over. But this is all cool. But I do 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.480 think we should get back to the Mona Lisa's weird smile. 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:50.720 I know I keep bringing it up, but I feel 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:51.760 like we have to talk about it. 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:55.400 Yeah, it's the smile that launched a mediocre two thousand 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.960 and three movie emego. It's sixty percent on Rotten Tomato, 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:01.359 so I would say, I don't sleep on it. So 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:02.360 I was up. 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:05.520 I just, you know, I like to know what it 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:08.640 gets on rotten tomatoes. But I also looked into Mona 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:11.720 Lisa's smile and it's amazing. Like the preoccupation with the 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:15.080 painting smile dates back to the Renaissance writer and historian 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:19.880 Giorgio Vasari, and he actually said, in this work of Leonardo, 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:22.760 there was a smile so pleasing that it was a 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:26.000 thing more divine than human to behold, and it was 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:30.400 held to be something marvelous in that it was alive. 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:33.960 Which sounds spooky. Sounds spooky. 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:37.040 But he also wasn't the only one that was so 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:41.000 captivated here. So the treacherous attraction of Moasa's smile is 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:44.640 said to have consumed French artist Luke Maspero too. According 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:48.240 to popular myth, Maspero allegedly ended his life over it. 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:51.000 We actually leapt from the I know it's crazy, actually 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.440 leapt from the fourth story window of his Paris hotel room, 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:58.400 and in the note he left behind, he wrote, for years, 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:02.920 I have grappled desperately her smile. I prefer to die. 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:07.640 That's so dramatic, you know, you know, why would a 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.320 smile and a painting drive someone so crazy? It it 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:11.600 feels ludicrous. 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.919 Well, you know what, there's actually some science here, like, 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:17.560 there are explanations for it. Some people who look at 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:20.800 the painting think she's not smiling at all, and that's 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:24.320 because the human eye uses two types of vision. There's 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:28.400 fobial and there's peripheral. Now, fobial or direct vision is 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:31.560 excellent at picking up detail, but is less suited to 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:36.160 picking up things like shadows, and so, according to Margaret Livingstone, 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.599 a professor at Harvard Quote, the elusive quality of the 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.479 Mona Lisa smile can be explained by the fact that 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:46.880 her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies and 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:50.560 so is seen best by your peripheral vision. It's almost 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:53.360 like an optical illusion, like the more a person stares 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:56.880 straight ahead, the less their peripheral vision actually works. 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.680 Oh that's really cool. So I'm at the I'm staring 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:02.160 at the Mona Lisa because I want to take it 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:04.760 all in and get my money's worth. But the harder 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:07.159 I stare, the harder it is for my vision to 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:09.640 register that smile. That's exactly right. 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:12.080 And it's only when you start looking at other parts 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.920 of the painting, like the background or hands or the chair, 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:17.800 that's when your eyes really pick up on the smile, 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.040 which could sort of strike you as alive, right because 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:24.119 it's not there, and it suddenly appears like Mona Lisa 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.440 is finally deigned to smile at you, the sweaty jet 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:29.720 lag tourists who's come all the way to friends to 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:30.160 see her. 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:34.160 I mean, that's the theory, Mango. You know what's funny 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:38.000 is that I'm really glad you mentioned the chair. Wait, chair, 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:39.520 What did I say about the chair? I don't think 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:41.360 I said anything about the chair, did I Just that 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:45.320 it exists? It trikes out chair. The chair is one 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:47.840 of the most interesting parts of the Mona Lisa, and 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:52.320 one that art historians actually focus on specifically, it's a 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:56.400 Pozetto chair, which means little well, which some historians believe 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:58.880 is a reference to the amphibious nature of Mona Lisa. 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:02.280 She's surrounded by water, She's wearing this green dress, and 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.040 if you know she's sitting on a little well, you 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:07.720 can imagine the rivers behind her are flowing into her. 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:12.040 Mm hmm. It's obviously a rich and surprising and ingeniously 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:14.840 conceived work of art. But here's what I've always been 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:17.520 stuck on with the Mona Lisa. Like the Renaissance had 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:19.320 I don't know if you know this, but a lot 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:23.080 of really super good paintings Mago, which also sounds like 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:24.600 a quote from Art Forum. 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:27.640 Straight from it. But seriously, I've always wondered what made 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.720 the Mona Lisa stick out amongst all this amazing art, 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.320 And through our research, I finally found the answer, Mango. 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:39.440 It's the vibes. Vibes, yeah, yeah, well, the vibes and 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:42.840 incredible marketing, like the Mona Lisa is like the Jeremy 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:45.000 Allen White of Renaissance paintings. 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:46.600 I don't even know what that means. 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:49.120 All right, well, hear me out on this. So even 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.640 before it was in the loop, the Mona Lisa started 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.880 out hot like it had this great pedigree. It was 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:57.720 in the royal collection of the literal King of France, 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:01.360 Francis I, and who's court Leonardo spent the last years 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:04.520 of his life. The painting was there for centuries until 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.920 the French Revolution claimed the royal collection as the property 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:11.000 of the people. Then Napoleon took it and placed it 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.120 in his bedroom because he loved it that much, and 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.880 then finally it landed in the Louver. Sure, so there's 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:19.839 like a lot of history there of being owned by 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:23.040 important people. But it was also the heat around Leonardo 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.520 da Vinci that helped grow interest in the Mona Lisa, 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:28.880 because something happened in the nineteenth century where Leonardo became 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:31.760 more popular, you know, see, not only as a very 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:34.800 good painter, but also as a great scientist and inventor 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.839 of course, and many of his so called inventions were 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.920 later debunked, and his contributions to science and architecture came 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:43.920 to be seen as you know, less than they might 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.640 have been at first. But this idea of Leonardo as 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.720 a genius has continued well into the twenty first century, 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:53.319 and that of course has contributed to the Mona Lisa's popularity. 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:57.320 But then there was Marcel Duchamp's contribution to the painting. 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.559 So you're talking about Deuchamp. The data is too, you know, 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:03.920 made all that fun crazy art, like signed that urinal 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:05.880 and entered it into an art exhibition. 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:09.719 Back guy, Yeah, very same guy. So Duchamp took a 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:12.320 postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa. This was back in 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:16.160 nineteen nineteen. He drew a beard and mustache on it. 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:18.400 It was like this playful depiction. It was meant to 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:21.760 be in irreverent commentary about the worship of art. But 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:27.560 he also wrote lhoo q across the bottom of the postcard. 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:31.719 Which sounds like, look right, is that us? What was 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:35.240 I mean? Exactly? Well, it's a vulgar phrase for I 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.520 guess you could say she's hot, But the polite translation 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:44.120 is there is fire down below, got it? You've never 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:47.360 written that on anything anyway. 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:50.880 The depiction of the Mona Lisa became a huge thing 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:54.680 to deface of this revered work of art as commentary, 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.920 and before a long other artists followed suit and distorted disfigure. 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:02.079 They played with rep reductions of the Mona Lisa, including 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:06.439 Andy Warhol. Actually, over decades, as technology improved, the painting 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:11.600 was endlessly reproduced, sometimes manipulated, sometimes not, and so her 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:14.000 face became one of the most well known in the world, 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:16.040 even to people who don't really care about art. 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:19.120 Right, so, I may have never been to the Loof 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:21.719 or never even heard of Leo da Vinci, But by 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.800 the twentieth century, even if I hate art, it's hard 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:28.680 to avoid the Mona Lisa's presence. That's exactly right. In fact, 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:31.120 in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the Mona Lisa was 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:34.360 so famous she went on tour. She traveled to the 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:37.080 US and a first class cabin on an ocean liner 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.800 threw about forty thousand people a day to the Metropolitan 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:43.520 Museum in New York City and then in the National 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:46.400 Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. And then after that 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:50.280 she went on to Japan. And of course the popularity 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:53.079 was only increased by that heist too, Right, wait, there 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:56.680 was a heist. It is really really fun, But why 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:58.400 don't we take a quick break before we get to that. 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:16.400 Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're discussing the 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:17.640 Mona Lisa and Mango. 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:20.520 You were just telling us about an art theft involving 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:24.080 da Vinci's most famous painting. Is that right? That's right. 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.640 So in nineteen eleven, the Mona Lisa had made it 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.960 to the Louver, a huge museum in Paris, literally huge like. 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:32.880 At the time, the Louver was the largest building in 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:36.079 the world, with more than a thousand rooms spread out 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:38.080 over forty five acres. 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:40.560 Can you believe, Oh my gosh, that's ridiculous. So what 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:42.480 is the heating bill on a place like that? Can 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:43.199 you imagine? 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:46.960 Nothing? Because it's France, so it's just cold, right, A 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.720 good point, that's fair. Anyways, it was a quiet Monday 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:53.640 morning in Paris on the twenty first of August nineteen eleven, 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.600 and three men were hurrying out of the Louver, which 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:58.640 is odd so that the museum was closed to visitors 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:02.520 on Mondays. The men were Vincenzo Perusia and the brothers, 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:08.760 Vincenzo and Michelle Lancelotti. They're these young Italian handymen. They 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.480 had come to the Louver on Sunday afternoon, hidden overnight 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:15.319 in a storeroom near the Salon care A gallery of 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:19.440 Renaissance paintings, and then in the morning, wearing white workmen's smocks, 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.240 they went into the salon and seized a small painting 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:25.079 off the wall. They ripped off the glass, shadow box 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.280 and frame, and then they went to a stairwell and 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.400 Perusia hid the painting under his clothes, and then they 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.079 slipped out of the gallery down a back stairwell, threw 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.160 a side entrance and onto the streets of Paris. And 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:39.240 so they stole the Mona Lisa. Yeah, they stole the 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:42.000 Mona Lisa. It took twenty six hours before the louver 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:45.320 staff even noticed that it was missing. You have to 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.000 remember how big the louver is, right, and in nineteen 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:50.400 eleven there were fewer than one hundred and fifty guards 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:52.199 looking out for all of that art. 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:54.880 I'm curious, so, like, how did they plan it and 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:57.439 why did they steal it? Like, give me the Ocean's 0:13:57.440 --> 0:13:58.560 ta plot here. 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:02.280 Mango before in nineteen ten, a letter was mailed to 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.240 the Louver from Vienna which threatened the Mona Lisa. So 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.400 museum officials hired a firm named Kobie to put a 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.920 dozen of its most prized paintings under glass, and the 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:15.040 work took three months, and one of the men assigned 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:18.280 to the project was Vincenzo Perusia who was one of 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:22.000 the thieves, and Prusia was this Italian worker on a 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:25.480 French construction crew, so they teased him a lot. Prusia 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:29.360 later testified in court that they quote almost always called 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:35.160 me Manja Macaroni or Macaroni eater, and very often they 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:38.600 stole my personal property and salted my wine. So he 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:43.320 was getting at this French crew. Yeah, and you took 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.600 it personally. And some accounts say Prusa was motivated by 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:51.480 national pride and he wanted to repatriate Mona Lisa to Italy. Anyway, 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:53.800 there there was this media explosion when the Louver announced 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:56.880 the theft. Newspaper headlines were all over the place, you know, 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:00.800 wanted posters for the painting were hung on Parisian walls, 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.680 and crowds masked at police headquarters. And when the Louver 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:09.680 actually reopened after a week, thousands of spectators, including Franz Kafka, 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.600 flooded into the salon to stare at the empty wall 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:16.520 where the Mona Lisa had once been. An empty people 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.280 are so weird, like why would people line up to 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:23.440 stare at a blank wall? I mean the grief was remarkable, right, 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:28.040 like the national outpouring. According to historians, mimicked the shock 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:31.000 of Princess Diana's death and where was the actual painting 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:34.080 being kept during all of this? So Prussia had squirreled 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.240 the Mona Lisa away in this false bottom of the 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:40.640 wooden trunk in his room at a boardinghouse. And when 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:44.040 the Parisian police interrogated him as part of all their interviews, 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:46.280 because they basically interviewed everyone who was working at the 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:48.880 louver at the time, he said he only learned about 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.280 the theft from the newspapers and that the reason he 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:53.160 was late to work that Monday in August was that 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:55.360 he had drunk too much the night before and overslept. 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:59.280 But Prusia ultimately wanted money for this world famous painting, 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:03.560 so he twenty eight months and then in December nineteen thirteen, 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.000 he left that boarding house with the trunk and he 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:08.360 took a train to Florence, where he tried to offload 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:12.280 the painting to an art dealer, who promptly called the police. 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.480 He then had a brief trial in Florence, pleaded guilty, 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.720 and ended up serving just eight months in prison. I mean, 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.040 I guess it's a fairly happy ending of the story, then, yeah, 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:25.120 and the painting actually went on tour in Italy briefly 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:27.880 before it got sent back to France. But the theft 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:30.520 made the Mona Lisa a global icon. In the first 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.200 two days after it was rehung in the Louvers Salon, 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:36.320 more than one hundred thousand people viewed it, and today 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:39.200 eight million people see the Mona Lisa every single year. 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.200 Wow, it does feel like Prusia should have gotten like 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:44.600 this pr fee or something like that for boosting the 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:45.880 Mona Lisa's profile. 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:50.520 Yeah, but weirdly, you know, there are actually some conspiracy theories. 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.160 So some said that theft was the French government's way 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:57.320 of trying to distract the public opinion from uprisings in 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:00.800 colonial West Africa. A few months before the was found, 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:03.600 the New York Times speculated that the Louver Restores had 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:06.919 botched a restoration job and that the museum was just 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:10.440 like concocting this story to cover that up. There was 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:12.879 also a rumor that a gang of international art thieves 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.320 had poached the painting and substituted a fake that was 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:17.760 in Perusia's possession when he was caught, which is all 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:22.400 kind of incredible. Whoa really. Yeah, And apparently this Argentinian 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:25.280 also confessed to masterminding the crime. He did this to 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:29.639 American reporter named Carl Decker. He basically said he paid 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:32.280 Perusia and the other two men to steal the painting 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:35.720 because the glass box that protected it weighed two hundred pounds, 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:37.800 so you needed a few men on the job. And 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:40.840 then he said he had six forgeries made and sold 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:43.399 to private collectors. So for a while there was some 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:45.520 question of whether the Mona Lisa and the Louver was 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:48.720 the real deal. And then the other conspiracy theory around 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:52.280 the theft was this whole you know Picasso thing. Wait 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:56.639 what Picasso thing? Yeah, it's kind of incredible. So during 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:59.439 that eighteen month period where the French police were not 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:02.280 arrested the dudes who actually stole the Mona Lisa, they 0:18:02.359 --> 0:18:07.200 arrested Pablo Picasso and the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire. 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.119 It started when this guy, Joseph Gary Pierre went to 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.360 the Paris Journal and told them that for the past 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:16.199 several years he'd been stealing and then selling minor artwork 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:19.520 from the Louver, and to prove it, Pire produced a 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:23.720 small statue that the Louver curators confirmed with museums, and 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.879 the police eventually connected Piree to Apollinaire, who was a 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:32.639 member of Picasso's modernist entourage. They were called labond de Picasso, 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:37.000 and there were this like group of artistic firebrands known 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:40.440 around town as the wild Men of Paris. And it 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:42.399 wasn't really that big a stretch for the police to 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:45.159 assume this ring of art thieves were sophisticated enough to 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:49.200 swipe the Mona Lisa. Of course, neither Apollinaire nor Picasso 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.480 had played any part in that painting's disappearance. 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:54.919 All right, So Picasso and his buddies didn't steal the 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:56.760 Mona Lisa. They were they were innocent. 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:00.880 Yeah. Well, the funny thing is they weren't exactly innocent. 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:04.439 Pierre was telling the truth that Picasso had bought stolen 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:07.600 statues from him and kept them buried in this cupboard 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:10.800 in his Paris apartment. And you know, later the artist 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.399 pretended ignorance, like he didn't know they were stolen. But 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:15.840 at the bottom of every statue it was stamped in 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:21.320 bold property of de Louver. That's not a good look. Yeah, 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:25.440 And it got weirder because when pire got put on trial, 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.159 it kind of ended up being like this massive farce. 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:32.240 Picasso and his friends confessed to putting their stolen statues 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.760 in this old suitcase and almost throwing the bag into 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:40.000 the sind before realizing they couldn't destroy this incredible art. 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:43.960 So upon Air confesses to everything on the stand, but 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:46.800 he also throws in a lot of lies, and Picasso, 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.240 who normally liked to project, you know, a supermasho image, 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:53.199 he breaks down and weeps and also says a lot 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:57.719 of nonsense, and it all confuses the judge and he 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.600 gets baffled by the whole thing and then ultimately just 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:04.560 dismisses the men with a warning. But because's involvement obviously 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:08.600 only brought the Mona Lisa more press, that is so funny, 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:10.960 all right, Well, let's take a moment to talk about 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.000 who the Mona Lisa actually is. Like, who is this 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.439 woman whose portrait has been reproduced a ridiculous amount of 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:21.080 times for five hundred plus years. Yeah, it's funny because 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:22.720 I feel like there used to be a real mystery 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:24.240 about who the Mona Lisa was. 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:26.560 That's right, But back in two thousand and eight, a 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:31.560 German university found conclusive evidence that it's Lisa Gerdini del 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:35.639 Jacondo dated notes from October fifteen oh three, scribbled in 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:39.320 the margins of a book at Heidelberg University's library. They 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:42.879 confirmed that Lisa del Jacondo was indeed the model and 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:46.280 her husband was most likely the man who commissioned the portrait. 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:49.679 The comments comparati Leonardo to the ancient Greek artist at 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:52.719 Pelis and said he was working on three paintings at 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:56.399 the time, one of them a portrait of Lisa del Jacondo, 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:59.840 which sounds pretty conclusive. Yeah, I will say at c 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:03.280 Like for almost any given fact or assertion about the 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:07.080 Mona Lisa, there is someone, often with the fancy Tyler 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:10.920 degree who disputes it, of course, like anything. But probably 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:14.240 the only thing everyone can agree on is that it's rectangular. 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:17.600 But let's go with the Lisa del Jacondo theory for 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.359 just a minute. Like, there's been this long standing theory 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:24.280 that Lisa was or had recently been pregnant when she's 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:27.160 set for this portrait, and in two thousand and four, 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:31.040 a series of three D scans essentially confirmed this. The 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:35.119 scans showed this fine gauzy veil around Mona Lisa's shoulders, 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:38.320 this garment that women of the Italian and Renaissance were 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.080 when they were expecting it's called a guamelo. 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:43.600 Well, couldn't we just see the veil by looking at 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:45.640 the painting? Like, why do we need three D scans 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.200 of all of us? Actually the scans have been able 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:50.000 to tell us a whole lot. Like for a while, 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.560