[Kate] The Mona Lisa

Since we're in Paris, going to Louvre is a given.  All of us have already been there, so we had a general idea of the kinds of things inside.  Each of the three kids made a list of their top five things to see (with no overlap), and so we had a list of things ready to go before we even left the apartment.  Nobody put the Mona Lisa on their list (we had all seen it before), but we stopped in to see it anyway.

When you see a picture of the Mona Lisa online, you probably see something like this:

Right?  But if you were in the room, you might end up with a picture that looks very different.  Maybe like this:

See that teeny tiny painting at the end of the crowd of people?  Yup, that's the Mona Lisa.  Or if you get closer, you get something like this:

It's a heavily filtered picture, but you get the idea.  Often some random heads on the way even if you get close enough to see the painting.

You can't get very close to picture, for obvious reasons.  The painting is covered bullet-proof class, in a temperature controlled container.  When it's not being displayed to the public, it's apparently lowered in its elevator-like contraption to a different level for storage.

So how would one go about stealing it?  Not that we're planning to, of course, but it's fun to speculate.  Cannon declared as we were leaving the room that he thought Danny Ocean could pull it off.

(This lead us to a side conversation about The Coronation of Napoleon.  If you wanted to, you could hide the Mona Lisa in a backpack--once you got past all the high security that is.  The point is that it's pretty small.  But what about a heist focused on The Coronation if Napoleon, which is 20.5 feet by 32 feet, approximately.  That could never fit in a backpack.  So what?  Hot air balloon?)

And when you look at all of the security, you have to wonder why.  Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the Louvre?  And, for that matter, in the world?  If it was in the Grand Gallery, lined up with all of the rest of the Italian paintings, I probably wouldn't pay it a lot of attention.  Nothing about it strikes me as super captivating.  The smile is something, but it's not that interesting to me, as it seems like something a lot of paintings can have.  It's never struck me as making the painting a lot more mysterious.

Yes, seeing the Mona Lisa is a bucket list item for a lot of people.  Not necessarily for the painting itself, but just to have seen the most famous painting in the world.  I can understand why.  I mean, seeing the most famous of anything is a cool experience.  But the painting itself is definitely not my favorite.  For me, this:

is much cooler than this: