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Agence France-Presse

The world’s most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, is to be moved so her room in the Louvre can be spruced up, the Paris museum said on Friday.
Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece will be carried less than “100 paces” to the adjoining Medici gallery during the night of July 16, the museum’s director Jean-Luc Martinez said.
The fragile 500-year-old painting is very rarely handled, and will remain protected by bulletproof glass in its temporary home.
The portrait of a Florentine noble will be returned to her spot in the States Room just before a blockbuster Leonardo exhibition opens at the world’s biggest museum in October.
Italy should take back the Mona Lisa, deputy PM jokes
The Louvre holds the largest collection of the Italian artist’s work.
Martinez said the move was part of an immense rolling renovation of the museum, which is struggling to cope with more than 10 million visitors a year.

Tens of thousands of people each day pass through the room in which the painting is shown opposite Paolo Veronese’s giant canvass, “The Wedding Feast at Cana”.
It has been sealed inside protective wooden shuttering while the work goes on.
“The population of a town” passes every day through the room, said Martinez, which hasn’t been redecorated since the early 2000s.
He said the “Mona Lisa” will stay in its original place for the Leonardo show – which begins on October 24 – as hanging it with the polymath’s other works would have caused such bottlenecks that visitor numbers would have to be limited.

“We could not deprive 15,000 people a day from seeing the ‘Mona Lisa’,” the director insisted.
The painting, thought to have been begun in the first years of the 16th century, has been moved very rarely since it was first housed in the Louvre in 1804.
Indeed it hasn’t left its walls in 45 years, and curators are strongly opposed to it doing so again, citing its fragility.
The painting was done on a thin panel of poplar, which has buckled over time, revealing a thin slit.
It last travelled in 1974 to Russia and Japan, having crossed the Atlantic in 1964 to be shown in the United States despite the fierce protests of the Louvre’s curators.


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France

Mona Lisa is on the move as Louvre museum undergoes makeover

The Mona Lisa is on display at the Louvre museum in Paris. Photo: AFP

A woman poses for a photo in front of the pyramid of the Louvre museum, in Paris, Tuesday, June 18, 2019. The giant glass pyramid was designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei and was unveiled in1989. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

(FILES) In this file photo taken on April 5, 2005, the famous painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, the Joconde "Mona Lisa," is on display in the Salle des Etats room at the Louvre museum in Paris. - The Joconde, the Louvre museum iconic painting, will be exceptionally moved mid-July for several months to allow for the renovation of the Salle des Etats, the room where it is displayed. It will be transferred "a hundred steps away" on July 16, 2019, to the Gallerie Medicis, one of the museum's largest gallery. (Photo by JEAN-PIERRE MULLER / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION

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The 500-year-old painting is very rarely handled, and will remain protected by bulletproof glass in its temporary home
It last travelled in 1974 to Russia and Japan, having crossed the Atlantic in 1964 to be shown in the US


The 500-year-old painting is very rarely handled, and will remain protected by bulletproof glass in its temporary home.
