It is one of the most famous paintings in the world, perhaps even the best known: The Mona Lisa. Painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the very early 1500s, the Portrait of Mona Lisa continues to attract crowds at the Louvre Museum in Paris. See The Mona Lisa is a dream, but also often a disappointing experience for visitors from all over the world.
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Around 80% of the 9 million annual visitors to the Louvre museum come to admire The Mona Lisa. On certain summer days, 25,000 people, who have waited in long queues, try to see in real life or behind their camera the famous Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile, sitting in three quarters, hands crossed, and who seems to follow you with his eyes.
The visitor’s experience is hardly pleasant and the Louvre museum plans to present the star in solitary confinement. After all, Leonardo DeVinci wanted to establish a face-to-face encounter between the painting and the person contemplating it. Some museums have chosen a dedicated space: for example, the Neues Museum in Berlin, with the bust of Nefertiti, or the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, with the painting Guernica by Picasso.
Today, The Mona Lisa is hung in the artistic environment of its time, near other great Venetian masters of the 16th century, facing the Wedding at Canaa painting signed by the painter Paolo Véronèse, the largest in the Louvre, which almost no one can see quietly anymore due to the proximity of its bulky neighbor.
There is a major project to re-enchant the “Mona Lisa experience”, but it would be necessary to find 500 million euros of investment, which is bad timing in a context of budgetary savings… It would involve opening new access to palace of the Louvre, in the facade of the colonnade, which would make it possible to unclog the pyramid and dig underground under the square courtyard of the Louvre two new rooms connected to the entire palace, one of which would serve as a setting for The Mona Lisa.
The Ministry of Culture is rather favorable to the new Grand Louvre project, but the decisions will be made between the Ministry of the Economy and the Élysée… We will undoubtedly have to make choices between the Notre-Dame museum project, the rehabilitation of the Orsay Museum, the future House of African Cultures or a new setting for The Mona Lisa.