What Museum is the Mona Lisa in? -The Travel Virgin Answers

What Museum is the Mona Lisa in?: The Great Louvre Museum hosts the Mona Lisa painting. It is the planet’s most visited and famous museum with more than 30,000 tourists every day. Of these tourists, 30% are local French and the rest foreigners. China and the United States contribute the most visitors to the Great Louvre.

It was built as a fortress in the late 12th century by Philip Augustus, the first official king of France, and remained a residence of the French kings until 1682. It was opened as a museum in 1973 during the reign of terror during the French revolution.

The locals call it Musee du Louvre, but its official name is Great Louvre. The museum contains 380,000 objects, but it only displays 35000 works of art, meaning if you spend 10 seconds looking at each display, it will take 14 days.

Other Painting in the Great Lourve-What Museum is the Mona Lisa in?

Great Louvre is located in the center of Paris, France, on the seine’s right bank in the city’s 1st ward. The museum has the most impressive paintings and sculptures other than the Mona Lisa, which include;

Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix,
The wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese and sculptures
Venus de Milo, an ancient Greek statue by Alexandros of Antioch
The winged victory of Samothrace-a Hellenistic sculpture
The Dying Slave, a sculpture by Michelangelo
The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault

These are among the few great pieces of art that can be found at Paris’s Louvre.

It is the biggest museum in the world, famous for displaying the masterpiece of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. To have a glimpse of her, you must head to room first floor, Denon wing of the Great Louvre.

The Mona Lisa was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of France.

Who painted the Mona Lisa?

Leonardo da Vinci painted this most famous hypnotic portrait. As one of the greatest painters in art history, he is renowned for the range and variety of his talents (An engineer, scientist, painter, sculptor, and architect), especially for embracing science and art.

Leonardo is considered a perfect epitome of the ideal human in the age of Renaissance. His other famous monumental wall painting is Last Supper, but after painting the Mona Lisa, he set a new touchstone for future portraits across the globe.

The Italian portrait is 500 years old, painted between 1503 and 1506. However, Da Vinci continued working on it in late 1517.

Leonardo da Vinci’s biographer, Giorgio Vasari, noted that he worked on the masterpiece for four years. He died later in 1519, leaving the Mona Lisa as one of many unfinished works.

Why is The Mona Lisa Painting so famous?-What Museum is the Mona Lisa in?

This is often the question that comes to your mind when you hear the word, Mona Lisa. Did you know the Mona Lisa attracts a maximum number of visitors every day, which is more than 20,000 people?

While most people think it is a big painting, many tourists are surprised when they see Mona Lisa for the first time. Its dimensions are 77cm by 30 cm, covered by a bulletproof safety glass that protects her. After three centuries, The Mona Lisa is adored for one or all of the following reasons.

The Painting Technique-What Museum is the Mona Lisa in?

Art connoisseurs consider Mona Lisa a masterclass because of the painting style; Leonardo used the sfumato technique to paint it with a tiny amount of pigmented colour with oil. It is a slow process; he used to apply a thin layer-grained piece of a poplar tree and an undercoat of lead white.

He used more like a ‘washing’ technique, after which he let dry and then painted on top. This results in an white undercoat which reflects the light through the glazes, giving the picture a ‘lighted’ effect. The experts believe this slow process took Leonardo many years to complete.

Leonardo used the classic pyramid-shaped composition that was introduced during the Renaissance. The structure provides stability but more importantly, it provides a clear center of focus and directs your gaze.

Mona Lisa’s case pulls a viewer into her face because he fills the frame with his subject, making the painting more intimate and cutting down on distractions.

Perfect Naturalism-What Museum is the Mona Lisa in ?

The Mona Lisa presents itself in the most realistic way possible. Her clothes are nothing special; it’s a morning veil that is simple for a wealthy woman, as some might say.

With this plain dress, the painting shows her sitting folding arms from the base of a triangle that reaches up from each component to the head with no jewelry and simple hair.

The Italian artist Leonardo ensured that one would not be distracted from the face of the Mona Lisa. The dress has a low neckline that exposes her chest.

Her facial expression

Mona Lisa is indeed smiling while many deem her frowning. The portrait expresses several emotions: happiness, annoyance, maybe even relaxation. When you glaze away, the charismatic smile remains in your mind.

Dutch researchers decided to use a software that determine emotions and the results of this exercise by the University of Amsterdam is that the Mona Lisa had varying emotions expressed through her smile.

Research Results of Mona Lisa Emotions Using Recognition Software

Happy	83%
Disgusted	6%
Angry	2%
Neutral	Less than 1%
Surprised	0%

The Real Mona Lisa

Just like most paintings with meanings, The Mona Lisa does too. The painting is also called la Gioconda because experts believe that the portrait is of Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine cloth and silk merchant named Francesco del Gioconda. She was born on June 15, 1479, and died on July 15, 1542. The translation for Mona Lisa means “My Lady Lisa.”

The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911

Vincenzo Perugia, a former museum employee, sneakily went into the museum and escaped quickly with the art after hiding in a closet overnight.

This heist broke the media outlets all over the globe since it became breaking news. It created so much drama causing passers-bys to crowd at the spot where the painting used to be hung.

Images of the artwork were splashed across international newspapers, making it the best-known painting in a time that TV, the internet, and phones did not exist. The Mona Lisa was later recovered in 1913 and kept in the Great Louvre.