Meanwhile, the Mona Lisa

The project to reform the Louvre museum unveiled at the beginning of the year by the Head of State, in the absence of his Minister of Culture, aims in part to monetize the prestige of the Grand Table of Léonardo da Vinci, The Mona Lisa. However, culture is supposed to be a source of spiritual expression, open to everyone. From Malraux to Macron, the idea of the museum underwent a tangible devaluation.

“The museum is one of the places that give the highest idea of man”. There was a time when a Minister of Culture of the Fifth Republic was expressed in terms which gave him natural legitimacy for the function he occupied, which reflected a personal look, a own vision of culture. This sentence belongs to André Malraux, the legendary minister of General de Gaulle, with whom he shared the infinite love for literature, art and history of France. Even more, during the dark years for Europe the two men had the courage to resist the dominant political doctrine of Nazi Germany, a resistance to “mainstream” thought which takes today a very particular meaning.

The President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron also made the museum a very high idea, first of all for his own person, because it was precisely the Louvre, the largest museum in the world, which he had chosen to celebrate his victory in the presidential election on May 7, 2017. Almost eight years later, on January 28, 2025, the French head of state returned to the place where it all started for him, this time to make a speech of the most famous The Mona Lisa De Leonard da Vinci. The Mona Lisathe president has taught us, will move to another place from the museum to benefit from the conditions “That she deserves” and an additional ticket to admire it.

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The current Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, was surprised, absent for the occasion, but his name was mentioned in the speech that Emmanuel Macron addressed to journalists. Among the measures announced by the President of the Republic concerning the plan to renew the Louvre, baptized “new Renaissance” (sic) and estimated at 700-800 million euros, the government wishes to establish a new tariff grid for extra-European visitors and it is indeed the rental of the ministry on rue de Valois who should stick to it.

The former Garden of Sceaux, known for his outspokenness and his well-tempered character, was not publicly expressed on the initiative of the Head of State and the Director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, to whom the original idea of major works are attributed. But the place left in this file in Rachida Dati, that of a bast accountant asked to release an Excel table displaying a good profitability rate, speaks volumes about the role of Minister of Culture in our country and of culture in general.

The Renaissance has created, the “Renaissance” deconstructs

If the “new Renaissance” (everyone can appreciate the allusion to the presidential party) presents itself as a program which aims to modernize the museum, it escapes anyone only 80% of visitors come to the Louvre to crunch the mystery of the smile of Lisa Gherardini, the young woman of the merchant Florentin Francesco del Giocondo, who had served Leonard de Model for the Joconde. With a different ticket to access the personalized room under the square courtyard, Mona Lisa will considerably increase the museum gains, because the overwhelming majority of art lovers would undoubtedly see other masterpieces of the establishment.

But how did such an idea not come to the minds of our political leaders before? What if we replied the same principle for other pieces in the rich collection of the largest museum in the world? The works well known and appreciated by all: the Venus de Milothe mummy of Ramses 2 or Freedom guiding the people delacroix? The Louvre recipes could then triple or even quadruple!

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Let’s give back to Malraux to understand: “The only area where the divine is visible is art, whatever name that is given”. Throughout the history of humanity and in particular for the last twenty centuries, art and painting at first have been considered as a gift of God, a source of spiritual expression, which celebrates the richness of the human soul and which seeks to fill us with the inner light, so different from the material aspirations of which man is in love with a degree to how important.

With delayed pricing for a single work of art, the Jocondein order to maximize the profits of the museum, what a world first in the genre is, our era has still blowed up a civilizational lock, operates another transgression of millennial values, in the perfect continuity of acts of militant vandalism on objects of art or the supposed staging of The Last Supper the same Leonard Da Vinci during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

The Mona Lisa will see this time (also) spend

Bought from Leonard by François 1^re over 500 years ago, The Mona Lisa made its appearance in the Louvre a few years after the French Revolution and definitively in 1802. The creation of the Louvre Museum itself was the direct consequence of the Revolution and had the objective of“Instruct citizens as artists, who should be able to freely study masterpieces”. Far from being the best known painting at its beginnings, the portrait owes its current legend to theft of the museum by a painter in Italian building, Vincenzo Peruggia, in August 1911. The case fascinated the Parisians to the point that the days that the burglary followed, immense crowds massaged in front of the square on the wall. The table was found two years later in Italy, and since then left France under the era of the Minister of Culture André Malraux. Anxious to promote the greatness of French culture, the politician made him travel to Washington and New York in 1963. The painting was also exhibited in Tokyo and Moscow in 1974.

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The quest for profit, which operates its sweet transformation of all the areas of our existence, which has already made several hospitals disappear, has reduced teaching positions in schools and has dropped by 30% the number of farmers in France for 10 years has now extends to museums, these secular temples which “Give the highest idea of man”.

Let us seek, once again, the answer to this phoneme among the maxims of Malraux: “There are works that pass time, and others that explain time.”. Once installed in its luxury pavilion of 2000 m² The Mona Lisa will continue to follow with its mysterious look the crowds of visitors around the world, who will parade in front of it, hoping to see this time under the sign of dehumanization pass as quickly as possible.

Reference list:

https://www.youtube.com/l’hisoire de la Joconde (all the facts

The museum is one of the places that give the highest idea of the man

The Mona Lisa in a paid room, a first in history

Speech by Macron, Louvre 28.01.2025

https: // 80% come to a bone-la-joconde

https: // Laurence des Cars-a-billet-D-entrée-au-Louvre-Sans-Joconde

Creation of the Louvre Museum