To put an end to complaints from tourists who would like to stay longer in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Louvre is considering moving the Mona Lisa to an underground room of the Parisian museum. The iconic image of a gentlewoman with an enigmatic smile is protected by bulletproof and anti-reflective glass, along with tightly controlled temperature and humidity settings to ensure the painting’s preservation. In an attempt to remedy this situation of excessive crowding and the queues that fuel the discontent of visitors who have come from all over the world, the Mona Lisa could be moved to a newly built vaultas reported by the French press.
A new underground chamber for paintings would be part of a future renovation of the “Grand Louvre”, with a new entrance to the museum. Visitors would avoid the entrance with the famous glass pyramid and would be led directly to the underground rooms: one for the Mona Lisa and the other for temporary exhibitions. According to the newspaper “Le Figaro”, the budget for the renovation of the Louvre is estimated at 500 million euros.
The director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, recently suggested moving the popular work of art to a special room built in the basement of the institution. “We don’t welcome visitors very well in this room, so we feel like we’re not doing our job well,” de Cars reportedly told staff and supervisors. “Moving the Mona Lisa to a separate room could end public disappointment.” “We thought about it for a long time, but this time we all agree,” Vincent Delieuvin, the Louvre’s chief curator of 16th-century Italian painting, told “Le Figaro.” “It’s a large room and the Mona Lisa is at the back, behind its safety glass, so at first glance it looks like a postage stamp,” he pointed out.
Each year the Louvre receives between 9 and 10 million visitors, and according to museum officials, the Mona Lisa is the main attraction for 80 percent. On the busiest days, up to 25,000 people queue to see it for a few seconds. The painting’s popularity has prompted other attempts to improve the viewing experience, including the repainting of the gallery walls from egg yellow to midnight blue in 2019, as well as a change in the queuing system for visitors.
But Delieuvin said the impact of social media and mass tourism requires more effort, especially after the artwork’s celebrity increased following the theft in 1911. “Nowadays, you have to have seen at least once in my life something that everyone talks about, and the Mona Lisa is clearly one of those masterpieces worth seeing,” the curator said. “We must accept the painting’s global iconic status, which is beyond our control,” added Director de Cars.