The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
Should the Mona Lisa be relocated to Italy? This question was raised after a prominent archaeologist answered in the affirmative.
Zahi Hawass is arguably the most famous archaeologist in the world. As an Egyptologist, he has taught at both Egyptian and American universities. He has also served as excavation and/or restoration director at many archaeological sites, including Giza, Saqqara, Abu Simbel, and the Valley of the Kings. Furthermore, he is also a vocal proponent of returning Egyptian antiquities to their country of origin. These include the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum, the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin’s Neues Museum, and the many obelisks taken from Egypt to serve as public monuments in Europe and elsewhere. Small details can often have widespread consequences when dealing with subjects such as this. And, of course, for many of these items, it’s on a case-by-case basis, which is why Hawass may have needed to think a little more carefully when he announced he would support efforts to return the Mona Lisa to Italy. He should have been careful because there’s just one problem: for something to be returned somewhere, it had to be there in the first place. And the Mona Lisa has never spent much time in Italy.
The Mona Lisa has only spent a few months outside France in the five centuries since its completion. Of course, scholars and the public often hail Leonardo da Vinci as one of the great figures of the Italian Renaissance. The Mona Lisa’s subject is also Italian, as Lisa del Giocondo was the wife of a prominent Florentine merchant. However, Da Vinci spent his final years in France as a guest of King Francis I. Da Vinci took the Mona Lisa with him, having worked on it on and off for over a decade. After he died in 1519, the portrait went to Leonardo’s friend and pupil Salaì, who then, in turn, sold it to King Francis. It remained in the French royal collection, moving from palace to palace, such as the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, and Versailles. After the French Revolution, the government moved the Mona Lisa to the Louvre, where it has remained ever since… for the most part.
For much of its history, the Mona Lisa was not a particularly well-known painting outside of scholarly circles. That changed in 1911 when the Italian nationalist Vincenzo Peruggia stole the painting from the Louvre and tried to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. He believed that a masterpiece by a great Italian artist should be exhibited at a great Italian museum. The Uffizi’s director, however, had no intention of being an accomplice to the theft. The Uffizi exhibited the Mona Lisa for two weeks before returning it to Paris. Some say that more people visited the Louvre to look at the empty space on the wall than they ever did to see the painting itself. This incident cemented the painting’s international fame. The only other time the painting has left France is for special international exhibitions. The French government loaned the painting to the United States for exhibition in New York and Washington between December 1962 and March 1963. Later, France lent it for exhibition at Tokyo’s National Museum, followed by Moscow’s Pushkin Museum in 1974.
Although most art historians accept that the Mona Lisa has spent nearly all its time in France, Italian nationalists often put forward a different provenance. France has to be the story’s villain to give Italy any claim over the Mona Lisa. Therefore, some claim that King Francis stole or seized the painting illegitimately. Others will claim that Leonardo actually left the Mona Lisa in Italy rather than bring it to France. According to this alternate history, the painting stayed in Italy until Napoleon’s Italian campaigns in the 1790s, with French troops bringing the portrait to France. French troops brought many pieces of Italian art to France during the Napoleonic Wars, but the Mona Lisa was not one of them. Mistakenly grouping the portrait with these other artworks likely set Vincenzo Peruggia’s plan in motion. But in an era where information is so readily available, no one should be using this argument now. In an article for The Art Newspaper, art historian Martin Kemp wrote, “We may feel that the naïve Peruggia can scarcely be blamed for jumping to the wrong conclusion. Hawass has less excuse.”
Restitution has to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Every work of art in a museum far away from where it was first created has a different history and circumstances from each other. This only becomes more obvious with older items that are centuries old. Some of these paintings and antiques pre-date the formation of the countries that now ask for their return. Many artifacts have been taken from Egypt. Some were stolen, others were gifted or sold off by Ottoman authorities. If the Egyptian government asks for the return of the Luxor obelisk, now at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, can Turkey, as the Ottoman Empire’s successor state, also claim ownership over it? So, in the hypothetical situation where France gives away the Mona Lisa, who would they give it to? Italy as a country did not exist before the reunification efforts of the 1860s and 1870s. So would it go to Rome, the seat of Italy’s government? Florence, where Leonardo lived and worked for much of his life? Will any Italian museum do? However, none of these questions really matter since no Italian individual, institution, or government has any claim to the Mona Lisa. Questions over the Mona Lisa, in fact, distract from the actual, legitimate debates over the restitution of items that were actually stolen.