That international woman of mystery

EIGHTY percent of Louvre visitors say their objective is to see the “Mona Lisa,” or “La Joconde” (“the smiling one” in French). No one knows why she smiles or for certain who she is, though she is generally thought to be a Florentine noblewoman. Leonardo da Vinci worked on the painting from 1503 to 1506 but never considered it finished. He took it with him to France where he lived at the end of his life at the behest of Francis I, in whose arms he is said to have died.

It is thanks to Francis that the Louvre has five of the 19 major paintings by Leonardo that are now on display in museums around the world.

The “Mona Lisa” was stolen by a Louvre workman in 1911 who wanted to return her to Italy; it took museum officials 24 hours to realize she was gone and almost three years to get her back. Artist Pablo Picasso and poet Guillaume Apollinaire were briefly suspected of stealing the painting as a prank to promote modern art.

Raphael, Ingres, Delacroix and Corot were inspired by the “Mona Lisa.” Marcel Duchamp painted her with a mustache. Nat King Cole crooned about her. She traveled to the U.S. in 1963 and to Tokyo and Moscow in 1974 but is not expected to leave the Louvre again.

Last year she was encased in a new climate-controlled, bullet- and UV-proof display at the center of the redesigned Salle des Etats, a $6.2-million project underwritten by Nippon Television.

-- Susan Spano