The tourists streaming through the Louvre in quest of the Mona Lisa will look in vain this coming Monday in the pink room, where she has traditionally been housed.
The world’s most famous painting is being moved the evening before, with the public kept well away.
Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait, also known as La Giaconda, has a new home in the renovated Salle des Etats, about 150m away in the famous Paris museum.
From Wednesday, the small painting, measuring just 77cm by 55cm and weighing 2,5kg, will be on show once more.
In fact, the Mona Lisa with her mysterious smile is returning to the spot where she used to hang.
The painting’s history has been an eventful one. The new move will see this early 16th-century masterpiece placed in the museum’s most opulent room, lit from above and surrounded by about 50 of the best paintings from the Venetian School of the same period.
It will be protected as never before. The glass case is 40mm thick and made of unbreakable and non-reflecting glass.
It is also hermetically sealed to prevent deterioration.
The millions of visitors to the Louvre, who almost all want to see this painting, should be impressed by the new surroundings designed by the architect Lorenzo Piqueras.
The Salle des Etats has been closed for four years to allow the work to be completed. Nippon Television Network (NTV), which is well known for its sponsorship of the arts, provided â,¬4,81-million.
NTV also funded the restoration of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel from 1982 to 1985.
”When the Mona Lisa moves, the Louvre shakes,” the Paris magazine Nouvel Observateur has commented.
The changeover comes at a time when the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is still on the bestseller lists after many months, but there is nothing of the occult behind this move.
The number of visitors to the Louvre has been boosted by the book and by news that a Hollywood version is to be shot there, right at the ”scene of the crime”.
The famous portrait, apparently of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, was painted between 1503 and 1506 on white poplar wood in the sfumato technique invented by Da Vinci.
It later came into the possession of the kings of France, hanging in Fontainebleau and Versailles, and from 1804 in the Louvre.
The painting became world famous after it was stolen one Tuesday in August 1911 by an Italian decorator who offered it for sale in Florence.
Two years later, it was returned to the Louvre amid great celebration.
During the 1960s and 1970s, it was exhibited in the United States, Japan and in Moscow.
These days, the Mona Lisa leaves its sealed glass case only once a year to allow conservation experts to check it.
Modern techniques, including X-rays and spectroscopic examination of the pigments, continue to reveal new facts, but there is still considerable mystery surrounding the painting.
The return to the Salle des Etats, in which the painting hung from 1950, is likely only to increase the Mona Lisa‘s mystique.
And the filming of The Da Vinci Code in the Grande Galerie, with stars such as Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, will also help to pull in the crowds. — Sapa-DPA