Mona Lisa's fame can be gauged not just by the hordes of tourists jostling to catch a glimpse of her in her armoured box, but also by the number of copies made between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here’s a look back at this phenomenon as the Louvre Museum devotes an exhibition to her brilliant creator.
Musée de Tesse, Le Mans, copy attributed to Charles Dugasseau, second third of the nineteenth century, oil on canvas.
@ Musée de Tesse
It’s the world’s most famous artwork—and one of the most reproduced paintings in art history. In the early 1950s, the Louvre counted 52 copies. “Today, we know of 110, and there are undoubtedly more,” says Department of Paintings curator Vincent Delieuvin, who will co-curate the Paris exhibition. In the intervening decades, many have turned up on the market and found buyers, proving that the Florentine lady still has an aura. And more copies keep turning up. In June, an Asian buyer purchased a copy attributed to Théodore Chassériau from a German collection for €160,000 at Christie’s Paris, which, on 28 November, will offer a hitherto unknown nineteenth-century version. In January, an anonymous seventeenth-century replica fetched an astonishing $1.7 million at Sotheby’s New York, breaking the record for the most expensive copy.
The Mystery of the real Mona Lisa A step back in time is necessary to grasp the work’s enduring appeal. Painted on a poplar panel in Florence…
com.dsi.gazette.Article : 10491
This article is for subscribers only
You still have 85% left to read.
Print the article
