WSJ: Job One at the Louvre: Don't Stand in Front Of Smiling Woman
Mar 22nd 2005 | 7:15 pm
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WSJ: Job One at the Louvre: Don't Stand in Front Of Smiling Woman
Job One at the Louvre: Don't Stand in Front Of Smiling Woman
Curator, Guides Work Around Mona Lisa's Celebrity;
A Rare Day Off -- to Move
By DANIEL MICHAELS and ANNE-MICHÈLE MORICE
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 23, 2005; Page A1
PARIS -- On Monday, April 4, for the first time in three decades, visitors
to the Louvre Museum here won't see the Mona Lisa.
Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece last left the building on a trip to Japan in
1974 and, with her freshly renovated room about to reopen, may never leave
again. The vast majority of tourists in Paris visit the Louvre, and more
than 90% of them make a bee-line for the smiling visage of Lisa Gherardini.
The Louvre giftshop sells more than 330,000 Mona Lisa items annually,
including 200,000 postcards, 20,000 magnets and 10,000 puzzles.
The Louvre fears irate crowds if Japanese and American visitors turn up to
find an apology hanging from Lisa's empty spot on the wall. While
Rembrandts, Titians and El Grecos can all spend weeks in restoration, under
study or on tour, the Mona Lisa has always remained on display.
Photo:
http://tinyurl.com/5xvle
Caption:
Mona Lisa
That makes life complicated for her curator of two decades, Cécile
Scailliérez. The 47-year-old art historian can spend quality time with the
painting only on Tuesdays, when the Louvre closes, or at odd hours. Mona
Lisa's first X-ray in three decades was performed at night.
The painting's cult-like popularity presents singular problems for other
Louvre staff. Museum guides moan of tourists' monomania for the painting.
Guards complain of the constant noise, flashbulbs and pickpockets in her
room. The seasoned expert who X-rayed her in November was so nervous he
started fretting irrationally that a light bulb might fall from the ceiling
and damage the work. The image requires special security after a theft and
two attacks.
Now she is having her room renovated, to handle an average of more than
1,500 visitors an hour. She'll be off display on April 4 while curators
install her in the upgraded digs. In the meantime, she has taken over
another hall full of paintings.
In short, Mona Lisa has become like so many pop icons: a prima donna who
puts outrageous demands on her handlers.
"It's a nuisance," says Ms. Scailliérez, the curator. "She sets her own
laws" for how to organize the museum.
During Ms. Scailliérez's 20-year tenure, the idolatry has ballooned. Today
Mona Lisa receives at least one fan letter a week, much of it "bizarre," the
curator says. Ms. Scailliérez tries to respond to each, including a recent
hand-written missive from a numerologist who claimed to have stumbled on an
"INCREDIBLE" relationship between the painting's dimensions and da Vinci's
birth date.
"Everybody has a discovery," Ms. Scailliérez says.
Standing in front of the painting on a recent Tuesday, Ms. Scailliérez says
she takes advantage of the weekly quiet to admire Mona Lisa in peace.
Despite being inconvenienced by her subject, Ms. Scailliérez says "you don't
count the hours" spent with Mona Lisa.
Picture:
http://tinyurl.com/3pujq
Caption:
Cécile Scailliérez
A lover of 16th-century European art who refers familiarly to the Italian
painter as "Léonard," his name in French, Ms. Scailliérez studied at the
Ecole du Louvre, a prestigious Parisian art institute unrelated to the
museum. In 2003 she wrote a dense 100-page book on the painting "to dispel
the myths" around it. "Doing bestsellers with Léonard," she says, "is not my
thing."
Neither is reading "The Da Vinci Code," the hugely popular thriller in which
an elderly Louvre curator gets murdered. "It's commercial," she sniffs.
Tour guide Sonia Brunel, an art historian, also bristles at the
mass-marketing of the Mona Lisa. She says she often has a hard time getting
near the painting to explain it. Instead, she talks standing across the room
and waits for tourists to snap each other's portrait with the portrait. She
usually starts tours in Mona Lisa's room to get it out of the way so she can
"be more relaxed" on her circuit, although she would rather walk the museum
in chronological order.
Not everyone complains. Louvre security supervisor Marthe Duro recalls her
days guarding Mona Lisa as "a privilege." She adds that guards on Mona Lisa
duty "really earn a day's wages."
Jean-Pierre Mohen, director of the Center for Research and Restoration of
the Museums of France, who handled the X-ray last fall, recalls the moments
when he paused to admire da Vinci's "genius" in Mona Lisa's hands and eyes,
unfettered by protective glass. "Those were powerful moments," he says.
Even curators of the Louvre's other artworks, which most tourists rush past
to see the Mona Lisa, don't begrudge Mona Lisa's popularity. Grousing about
that would be "like complaining of being rich," says Olivier Mesley, the
Louvre's conservator of English and Spanish paintings.
Mona Lisa keeps up her brave face for people like the Greenbaum family from
New York. As Steven, a student in his 20s, takes photos, his mother notes
that if they visited Paris and didn't see the painting, "People would say
there's something wrong with you."
That attitude is why Louvre officials recently informed 6,000 travel
companies about Mona Lisa's day off. A warning pops up on the museum's Web
site, and alerts now appear in 10 languages on museum maps.
On that day, Mona Lisa will return after four years to her old room, which
now boasts improved lighting, better crowd circulation and special
antireflection glass to protect her. The installation will happen behind
closed doors on a Monday, when the Louvre is open, so that French officials
can dedicate her new abode the next day -- when the Louvre is closed --
undisturbed by museum-goers.
The return is the latest leg of an eventful journey. Scholars believe that
in 1503, wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo commissioned da
Vinci to paint Lisa, his third wife, then 24. "Mona," short for madonna, is
the Italian equivalent of "ma'am." Da Vinci spent almost four years applying
oil paints and layers of varnish to a poplar board. Why he never delivered
the portrait remains unclear. In 1516 he moved to France and took Mona Lisa.
She remained there when he died in 1519.
In 1798, during the French Revolution, Mona Lisa entered the Louvre, newly
converted into a museum. In 1800, Napoleon borrowed "Madame Lise" for four
years to hang in his bedroom. But it was larceny that elevated the
masterpiece to global fame.
Early on Aug. 21, 1911, Italian artist and Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia
removed the painting from its frame and walked out of the closed museum.
Newspapers hyped the mysterious kidnapping. The painting's return in 1913
sparked celebrations in France and Italy, where Mr. Peruggia was caught.
Back in Paris, Mona Lisa's reputation soared, although problems continued.
In 1956 an attacker threw acid at the painting. Several months later an
assailant threw a stone. The Louvre placed her behind glass.
Then, visiting the U.S. in 1963, she was the toast of Washington and New
York. In 1974, Tokyo fêted her for two months. Ever since, she's been as
firmly planted in Paris as the Eiffel Tower.
"The Louvre without Mona Lisa," says Ms. Brunel, the lecturer, "wouldn't be
the Louvre."
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...187128,00.html
Curator, Guides Work Around Mona Lisa's Celebrity;
A Rare Day Off -- to Move
By DANIEL MICHAELS and ANNE-MICHÈLE MORICE
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 23, 2005; Page A1
PARIS -- On Monday, April 4, for the first time in three decades, visitors
to the Louvre Museum here won't see the Mona Lisa.
Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece last left the building on a trip to Japan in
1974 and, with her freshly renovated room about to reopen, may never leave
again. The vast majority of tourists in Paris visit the Louvre, and more
than 90% of them make a bee-line for the smiling visage of Lisa Gherardini.
The Louvre giftshop sells more than 330,000 Mona Lisa items annually,
including 200,000 postcards, 20,000 magnets and 10,000 puzzles.
The Louvre fears irate crowds if Japanese and American visitors turn up to
find an apology hanging from Lisa's empty spot on the wall. While
Rembrandts, Titians and El Grecos can all spend weeks in restoration, under
study or on tour, the Mona Lisa has always remained on display.
Photo:
http://tinyurl.com/5xvle
Caption:
Mona Lisa
That makes life complicated for her curator of two decades, Cécile
Scailliérez. The 47-year-old art historian can spend quality time with the
painting only on Tuesdays, when the Louvre closes, or at odd hours. Mona
Lisa's first X-ray in three decades was performed at night.
The painting's cult-like popularity presents singular problems for other
Louvre staff. Museum guides moan of tourists' monomania for the painting.
Guards complain of the constant noise, flashbulbs and pickpockets in her
room. The seasoned expert who X-rayed her in November was so nervous he
started fretting irrationally that a light bulb might fall from the ceiling
and damage the work. The image requires special security after a theft and
two attacks.
Now she is having her room renovated, to handle an average of more than
1,500 visitors an hour. She'll be off display on April 4 while curators
install her in the upgraded digs. In the meantime, she has taken over
another hall full of paintings.
In short, Mona Lisa has become like so many pop icons: a prima donna who
puts outrageous demands on her handlers.
"It's a nuisance," says Ms. Scailliérez, the curator. "She sets her own
laws" for how to organize the museum.
During Ms. Scailliérez's 20-year tenure, the idolatry has ballooned. Today
Mona Lisa receives at least one fan letter a week, much of it "bizarre," the
curator says. Ms. Scailliérez tries to respond to each, including a recent
hand-written missive from a numerologist who claimed to have stumbled on an
"INCREDIBLE" relationship between the painting's dimensions and da Vinci's
birth date.
"Everybody has a discovery," Ms. Scailliérez says.
Standing in front of the painting on a recent Tuesday, Ms. Scailliérez says
she takes advantage of the weekly quiet to admire Mona Lisa in peace.
Despite being inconvenienced by her subject, Ms. Scailliérez says "you don't
count the hours" spent with Mona Lisa.
Picture:
http://tinyurl.com/3pujq
Caption:
Cécile Scailliérez
A lover of 16th-century European art who refers familiarly to the Italian
painter as "Léonard," his name in French, Ms. Scailliérez studied at the
Ecole du Louvre, a prestigious Parisian art institute unrelated to the
museum. In 2003 she wrote a dense 100-page book on the painting "to dispel
the myths" around it. "Doing bestsellers with Léonard," she says, "is not my
thing."
Neither is reading "The Da Vinci Code," the hugely popular thriller in which
an elderly Louvre curator gets murdered. "It's commercial," she sniffs.
Tour guide Sonia Brunel, an art historian, also bristles at the
mass-marketing of the Mona Lisa. She says she often has a hard time getting
near the painting to explain it. Instead, she talks standing across the room
and waits for tourists to snap each other's portrait with the portrait. She
usually starts tours in Mona Lisa's room to get it out of the way so she can
"be more relaxed" on her circuit, although she would rather walk the museum
in chronological order.
Not everyone complains. Louvre security supervisor Marthe Duro recalls her
days guarding Mona Lisa as "a privilege." She adds that guards on Mona Lisa
duty "really earn a day's wages."
Jean-Pierre Mohen, director of the Center for Research and Restoration of
the Museums of France, who handled the X-ray last fall, recalls the moments
when he paused to admire da Vinci's "genius" in Mona Lisa's hands and eyes,
unfettered by protective glass. "Those were powerful moments," he says.
Even curators of the Louvre's other artworks, which most tourists rush past
to see the Mona Lisa, don't begrudge Mona Lisa's popularity. Grousing about
that would be "like complaining of being rich," says Olivier Mesley, the
Louvre's conservator of English and Spanish paintings.
Mona Lisa keeps up her brave face for people like the Greenbaum family from
New York. As Steven, a student in his 20s, takes photos, his mother notes
that if they visited Paris and didn't see the painting, "People would say
there's something wrong with you."
That attitude is why Louvre officials recently informed 6,000 travel
companies about Mona Lisa's day off. A warning pops up on the museum's Web
site, and alerts now appear in 10 languages on museum maps.
On that day, Mona Lisa will return after four years to her old room, which
now boasts improved lighting, better crowd circulation and special
antireflection glass to protect her. The installation will happen behind
closed doors on a Monday, when the Louvre is open, so that French officials
can dedicate her new abode the next day -- when the Louvre is closed --
undisturbed by museum-goers.
The return is the latest leg of an eventful journey. Scholars believe that
in 1503, wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo commissioned da
Vinci to paint Lisa, his third wife, then 24. "Mona," short for madonna, is
the Italian equivalent of "ma'am." Da Vinci spent almost four years applying
oil paints and layers of varnish to a poplar board. Why he never delivered
the portrait remains unclear. In 1516 he moved to France and took Mona Lisa.
She remained there when he died in 1519.
In 1798, during the French Revolution, Mona Lisa entered the Louvre, newly
converted into a museum. In 1800, Napoleon borrowed "Madame Lise" for four
years to hang in his bedroom. But it was larceny that elevated the
masterpiece to global fame.
Early on Aug. 21, 1911, Italian artist and Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia
removed the painting from its frame and walked out of the closed museum.
Newspapers hyped the mysterious kidnapping. The painting's return in 1913
sparked celebrations in France and Italy, where Mr. Peruggia was caught.
Back in Paris, Mona Lisa's reputation soared, although problems continued.
In 1956 an attacker threw acid at the painting. Several months later an
assailant threw a stone. The Louvre placed her behind glass.
Then, visiting the U.S. in 1963, she was the toast of Washington and New
York. In 1974, Tokyo fêted her for two months. Ever since, she's been as
firmly planted in Paris as the Eiffel Tower.
"The Louvre without Mona Lisa," says Ms. Brunel, the lecturer, "wouldn't be
the Louvre."
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...187128,00.html
