It's actually written in the article at the very end, but it's really interesting to point out that Mona Lisa really was not all that famous until 1911, when it was stolen by an Italian nationalist.
Walter Pater, who died in 1894, gave the Mona Lisa (referring to it as La Gioconda) some paragraphs in his The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. (https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2398/pg2398.txt) I believe that W.B. Yeats used them, or an excerpt from them in an Oxford anthology of modern English verse (well after 1911, to be sure).
Recently struggling with the fact that most critics appear to be writing for other critics with their off-the-wall views representing art of its own kind - posturing for others in the field.
This one was much better for a non-artist. The crux of the thing appears to be that women were not shown looking at the camera in that age and this painting therefore challenges that.
Additionally, the theft of the painting added significance to it.
All right. That’s pretty neat. I only skimmed the article to try to get to this so I may have missed more.
And it's not like there isn't more than one "original" anyway. If the one the Louvre owns is even an original (and wasn't switched during the 20th Century theft).
I have a few prints of paintings. The only one on a wall right now is by John Singer Sargent (the others are contemporary). I don't have a copy of Mona Lisa on the wall and I don't know anyone who would. The physical painting is famous for being famous. It isn't great art.
https://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made...
It actually took 28 hours before anyone noticed that it's missing.