The Amazing Story Behind The Mona Lisa (Waldemar Januszczak Documentary) | Perspective

[Music] don't know if you've read this it's in all the bestseller lists don't bother if you haven't it's so silly it starts with someone being killed and one of the corridors here at the Louvre in Paris this chap is the keeper of an ancient secret and if he dies the ancient secret dies with him so he crawls along the long corridor and seeks out the most famous painting in the Louvre and there who scrolls a secret message on the glass that protects the Mona Lisa now the Mona Lisa has long been a magnet for mystery addicts and fruitcakes you want mysteries she's got loads of them the mystery of her elusive identity the mystery of her elusive smile it's even been said she's a projected self-portrait of Leonardo as a crossdresser even her eyebrows a mysterious why hasn't she got any [Music] but there is one mystery concerning the Mona Lisa that can actually be solved and we're going to do it in this film it's perhaps the deepest mystery of all and that is why and of all the countless old masters gathered in all our museums why did this particular one become the most famous painting in the world now that's a mystery worth solving the Mona Lisa is 500 years old she was painted in Florence in around 1503 in Paris they've recently been celebrating her birthday 500 years old it's a good age but the first thing to grasp about the Mona Lisa's ridiculous fame is that it's rather new for 300 years after she was painted the Mona Lisa was almost entirely unknown just a handful of people in history had ever seen her or even heard of her [Music] she only started to become famous about 150 years ago and really really famous this famous in the 20th century so her fame is rather new so by the way is the fame of her creator Leonardo da Vinci today we think of Leonardo as the greatest genius of the Renaissance scientists mathematician anatomist the man who not only painted the Mona Lisa but who also invented flying machines submarines and bicycles and it's just not true I'm not saying that Leonardo didn't vaguely imagined some of those things but I am saying that he never actually built any of them Leonardo almost discovered lots of things but only almost his tragedy is that he never went the final mile the bit that counts well no no that was not that celebrated one of the problem is that Leonardo did not paint very much with Raphael was on production line one of the other michelangiolo the did the whole ceiling after all a woman walls of the Sistine Chapel a huge project in four years which is what apparently you know it took don't know how to paint you know this tiny portrait and so she wanted the you know lots of work you were gonna get to ask him know that famous drawing that people always say is him the old man with the big biblical beard and the all-seeing eyes well there's no actual evidence it's Leonardo just our wishful thinking because this old man with the big beard reminds us of some great biblical leader doesn't he Moses perhaps or even God so the next thing to get clear in our minds is that Leonardo da Vinci is chiefly like this a work of fiction before we tiptoe any further into the conceptual quagmire that is the mystery of the Mona Lisa I think we need to find out a tad more about the real Leonardo [Music] olives they're everywhere on this hill but just about the only thing that's up here is olive groves we're about two kilometers out of Vinci little Tuscan town of Vinci let's go down Keano about 20 miles out of Florence and this simple little Tuscan Hill house is the house in which Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 his father was a notary a lawyer called ser Piero da Vinci and his mother all we know about her so she was called Catarina and Leonardo was their illegitimate son not his father bought this house from the Friars that used to own it he was working for them as a lawyer and it's hardly changed since then it's just two very basic little rooms really lovingly preserved in their original state of decrepitude but look at this just above the window on the front a lion wearing a helmet that's the coat of arms of the DaVinci family original fireplace Leonardo ghastly likeness I think coat of arms again it's rather spooky feeling actually it's such a humble place for such a big brain to have been born the another's artistic career is so frustrating he's always starting things and never finishing them he spent the first 30 years of his life in Florence yet all he had to show for all this time was a couple of pictures one of them is this gorgeous portrait of Ginevra da Vinci she's rather glum why in Italian Ginevra means juniper so the halo of juniper around her head is a coded clue to her identity from the start Leonardo could make his women feel mysterious he's an early Madonna and Child that hangs in the Hermitage in Russia what a ghastly multi pounded Jesus look at the size of him I don't like her expression either it looks forced to me say cheese cheese these early experiments with different women's expressions had such mixed results that Leonardo soon settled on one he knew he could rely on an expression he always used you know it already it's that mysterious smile playing on a woman's lips whether they're the Virgin Mary or a girl off the street began giving his women the same look the Mona Lisa's mysterious smile was an expression he was churning out the next 20 years Leonardo worked in Milan as the in-house genius for the local Dukes starting lots of things finishing none of them except this the Last Supper the famous masterpiece that's been falling off the wall ever since he painted it because the technique he used was so lousy after 20 years in Milan he returned to Florence he was already in his fifties when a commission came his way that will finally lead to his most famous achievement a portrait of a plumpish Florentine merchants wife named Lisa Gherardini lots of extraordinary surprises in the story of the Mona Lisa but perhaps the earliest of them is that that story begins here in this grim little Florentine Street could the Via del estufa now this is the street in which Lisa Gherardini who is traditionally thought to have been the florentine lady who posed for the Mona Lisa actually lived she was married to a Florentine cloth merchant called Francesco del Giocondo and that explains why in France she's known as La Gioconda why in Italy they call her la Gioconda and why rather confusingly the rest of us call her Mona Lisa Madonna Lisa it's what everybody would have said to her Madonna Lisa becomes Mona Lisa thus in this grim little Florentine streets populated these days chiefly by Florentine lowlife the great legend of the Mona Lisa was born for some reason Leonardo never handed over the Mona Lisa to Francisco del Giocondo and his wife probably because he never considered her finished he was such a fiddler Leonardo's was now on the slide in Italy he was out of fashion and his reputation for not finishing things preceded him wherever he wandered internationally what Fame II had was due entirely to his much copied comic grotesques of ugly old men and big-nosed Jews they're rather racist really it was the French King Francois the first who saved Leonardo by taking him in when no one else would have him Francois invited the 64 year old multitasker to work for him in France in the Chateau of Amboise on the Loire Leonardo brought the Mona Lisa with him and no doubt fiddled with her some more when he died here three years later in 1519 the Mona Lisa entered the French royal collection and to all intents and purposes disappeared for 300 years and then the first great break for the Mona Lisa the first great career move as I would put it the French Revolution but what the French Revolution does apart from minor things like abolishing the monarchy and and so on is to transform the Louvre into a museum so at least she's now gone from you know semi-obscurity to a proper proper place another thing is Napoleon Napoleon took a shine to many women and one of these was Mona Lisa and indeed for think four years the Mona Lisa was removed from public viewing and was in Napoleon's bedroom and then it was put back in the Louvre and has remained there ever ever since [Music] 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 Ellora choose 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 a ludicrous journey to global fame could finally begin hang on to your hats because we're taking you on it [Music] when we left you the Mona Lisa had just got to the Louvre and people could finally see what she looked like they liked what they saw but had trouble agreeing on what it was then as now everyone found something different in the Mona Lisa in the middle of the 19th century some intellectuals and writers begin to discuss the Mona Lisa as the most formidable example of the femme fatale this is when the smile becomes mysterious and enigmatic there is no mention of an enigmatic smile with Ramona Liz I mean basically until about 1850 Mona Lisa is a cheerful housewife from 1850 onwards she is orchestrating female [Music] you won't believe some of the silly things that began to be written about her by the feverish blokes of the 19th century let me read you something here it's 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 the vampire she's been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave and been a diver in deep seas he just goes on and on I mean this is an 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 but of course you needed an event you need a thought opportunity and that occurred in the shape of an Italian workman Vincenzo Peruggia who stole the painting in August 1911 and kept it for two years in his bed set not far from the loo near the stove the moral is a piece of wood can imagine the possibility terrible possibilities and that made the world press every day for three four weeks there was something about Mona Lisa the police can't find it the security of the Louvre is terrible the director of the Department of painting said to resign you know it was became a sort of go celebs so people could see them on a Lisa nearly every day as they were having their breakfast so why would anyone be so stupid as to steal the Mona Lisa various conspiracy theories were aired at the time and indeed people have been airing them ever since the likeliest answer is that the entire mad thought was the handiwork of an Argentinean forger called Eduardo de Valfierno well he almost crazy idea was to produce a handful perhaps six or seven copies of the Mona Lisa while he had it in his hands and then to sell these copies on to some very very gullible American millionaires now this has never been proved what's certain is that if you were a very gullible American millionaire you would hardly have popped up afterwards he said yes I bought one of these and undoubtedly there were these very special copies floating around the European art world after the theft however once Valfierno had done his dirty deed and produced his copies he no longer had any real need for the painting itself so he handed it back to his accomplice Perugia and Perugia was stuck with the Mona Lisa a painting that the whole world was looking for what was he going to do with it [Music] Perugia must have realized that the painter was far too hot to do anything with in France so he came back here to Italy and he holed up in this hotel in Florence which used to be called the Tripoli Italia but which not surprisingly has now changed its name to the gioconda because it's in this hotel that the great lost painting was finally found Perugia contacted a Florentine antique dealer called Alfredo Gerry and offered to sell him the Mona Lisa for half a million lira inevitably Gerry contacted the Italian police three days later they came here to the hotel and arrested Vincenzo Peruggia when they got inside Perugia is ruined they found the Mona Lisa tucked away in a suitcase underneath his bed when they asked him why he'd stolen her Perugia replied that it was an act of patriotism all along all he ever really wanted to do was to ensure that the great Florentine Beauty was returned to her rightful home Perugia was set down for a year for stealing the Mona Lisa this doesn't seem very much does it one thing certain no matter how famous the Mona Lisa was before Perugia and his cronies stole her from the Louvre this prior fame was as nothing compared with the enormous global notoriety that the picture acquired once all those newspapers and all those columns that stopped writing about the great theft and so are plump Florentine housewife finally became an international celebrity at the age of 400 because of the robbery everyone now knew what she looked like and everyone wanted to know more about her in 1919 the notorious Dardar artist Marcel Duchamp proved she'd really arrived by taking the mickey out of her giving her a moustache and a goatee and adding the letters L ash or cou in French a naughty pun which means she's got a hot ass or as we might perhaps say today a hot booty there is not any single moment to wear the mona lisa becomes the world's most famous painting there are building blocks there are stepping stones so being in Paris is an important thing being painted by 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 a futurist and avant-garde artist was also very important and being regularly exploited but the advertising industry in order to sell everything from fridge magnets hotels flights and condoms even you know all that is a tremendous asset for for a girl I can't face going into detail about the subsequent growth of the Mona Lisa tat industry it's too horrible to witness instead let's just visit the house of the world's biggest hoarder of Mona Lisa memorabilia and savour some of the highlights of his collection recorder [Music] my house has become somewhat of a Mona Lisa Museum or shrine if you like I have gathered together some of the most beautiful items I have in my collection like this wonderful photo mosaic here under the reflection is a bit irritating these magnificent cushions these ceramic tiles from China this is America it's called the giggling Mona Lisa and this Persian rug it's a bit amateurish but still it's magnificent and this is something I made myself free it's based on William Tell but as you can see the arrow has missed its target once you're famous for being famous all you can really do is become more famous still it's the golden rule of modern celebrity and the case of Lisa Gherardini proves it so clearly so that's cleared up the mystery of how the Mona Lisa got famous what it doesn't explain is how she ever managed to be obscure in the first place how can a painting as wonderful as this ever be obscure [Music] go on forget everything you've ever heard about her forget the teacups and the posters just go and look at her properly you'll enjoy it there are a million stories in the world of art this has been just one of them [Music]

Channel: Perspective

Views: 92,384

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, mona lisa, leonardo da vinci, mona lisa smile, da vinci, mona lisa secrets, secrets of mona lisa, the mona lisa, famous art, famous paintings, art history, history documentary, waldemar januszczak, waldemar januszczak documentary, art history documentary, perspective art, mona lisa documentary, waldemar j

Id: YRPwbdIhYOU

Length: 23min 21sec (1401 seconds)

Published: Thu May 21 2020