You needn’t study art to have heard of Picasso, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci or the Mona Lisa. Especially the Mona Lisa. The lady with the smile. Is she sad? Is she happy? We might never know. She’s memorable. That much we do know. The Mona Lisa was the mother of memes since before memes were even a thing. There have been so many variations of the famous painting that you’d be forgiven for forgetting what the original looked like.
But the Mona Lisa isn’t the only memeworthy work of art that’s providing people with endless entertainment. Twitter page Art History Memes for Aesthetic Fiends has over 50 thousand followers. All art and meme lovers. Keep scrolling for some classic examples of life imitating art. And find out how the Mona Lisa became a global icon.
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It is said Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci started painting her somewhere between 1503 or 1506. The real Mona Lisa was apparently a lady called Lisa Gherardini who married a wealthy Italian man and became Lisa del Giocondo. Her husband had asked da Vinci to paint her. But the portrait became a masterpiece in procrastination.
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Da Vinci worked on it for several years, carrying it everywhere with him. He’s believed to have only finished it shortly before he died in 1519. And it was never handed over to the client. Instead, the artist sold it to France’s King Francis I in 1518. The painting eventually ended up in The Louvre in Paris but didn’t attract as much attention back then as it does now. And here's why...
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Ms Mona Lisa is known for her mysterious smile and captivating gaze. But that’s not what made her so famous. On 21 August 1911, a maintenance worker at The Louvre snuck into the museum on a Saturday afternoon. The Italian ripped the painting off the wall, hid it under his clothes and walked out onto the street.
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The theft made world headlines. And the painting gained fame overnight. Crowds poured into the gallery to see the empty space where it once hung. Newspapers printed photos of it. The Mona Lisa was turned into postcards, a short film and even cabaret songs. But the original painting remained missing. As police investigated, another famous artist Pablo Picasso was one of those arrested on suspicion he’d stolen it. He was quickly released and the search continued.
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“Generous rewards were promised for her return – but all in vain. Nothing was heard of the painting for over two years. Then one day, Vincenzo Peruggia, a glazier who had worked at the Louvre, tried to sell the world’s most famous painting to an Italian art dealer...who alerted the authorities. So the Mona Lisa was recovered – and her fame was all the greater,” reads The Louvre’s website.
The high-profile heist turned the Mona Lisa into a global icon. She was exhibited in Florence, Milan and Rome, before being returned to the Louvre. More than 100 thousand people visited her in the first two days “back home”.
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In 1919, an artist called Charles Duchamp drew a mustache and goatee on a replica of Mona Lisa - and the world was never the same again. Mona Lisa became a mood. Duchamp had paved the way for a plethora of parodies. Other artists, and then the public, followed suit. There was Mona Lisa fever. Pneumonia Lisa, Corona Lisa, Monday Lisa, Menopausa Lisa.
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Despite being centuries old, Mona Lisa remains a modern muse. She’s managed to reinvent herself many more times than Madonna. We reimagine her magical smile and move her into situations we can relate to. A sly grin after getting away with something sneaky or a fake smile when faced with an awkward social situation. There are even websites like this one, dedicated solely to Mona Lisa memes.
As Elephant Magazine reported, “Most of these memes see the Mona Lisa reimagined as a contemporary figure: she’s posing for a selfie with duck face; she’s cuddling a Shiba; she’s having a bad hair day; and in the age of corona, she’s now even donned a face mask.”
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And as the art magazine aptly states, “By making her into a meme we also make the Mona Lisa one of us. We enjoy it when celebrities are just like us, and who cares if she’s just an inanimate Renaissance painting, the fame and zeal she’s created is on a level with the instafamous stars of today."
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