What a weird essay! Very unsatisfying payoff. They lay out the theft, public reaction, some art history, then not a single word on how it resloved, who actually took it and how it was found. The only hint was "an antique dealer got a letter". Thanks, I guess I'll just try Wikipedia.
I went and looked, very Web 1.0 this, so maybe that's why it looks so obvious to me that they're links as this is how things would have looked if you were a cool website in 2000, but also they have no obvious function other than being links, given that they are so very small, they always show the same image and they have ugly border around them.
This is why I never got into books. There's a few hundred words, and then they just stop! Sometimes in the middle of a sentence! I've never figured out where they hide the scroll wheel so I can get to the rest of the text.
All media come with some conventions that people are simply expected to know. In the late 90-ies, a blueish border around an image was an indication that it was a clickable link. Nobody ever bothered pointing out that this image can be clicked. Perhaps lazy, I don't know, but then the entire web was guilty.
I’m on a phone. I honestly couldn’t even see the border around the image until I went back and looked super close again. It is very hard to make out. Probably because the images are so tiny.
Sure. You're on a device that had its first incarnation launched seven years after this web page was made. The site was made in the era of 800x600 CRT monitors. There was no way in hell people could miss that border.
The web designer didn't account for a world that wouldn't exist for another decade. Nobody expected people to run around with supercomputers in their pockets, equipped with screens with a pixel density more than an order of magnitude higher than was common place at the time, on a screen an order of magnitude smaller.
How many people today take common usage patterns of the 2030-ies into account when they're designing things? Any web pages optimized to be consumed by AI:s running on quantum computers embedded in people's underwear? If not, what's their excuse?
The issue is not whether someone knows the links are clickable or not. The issues were raised upthread:
> They lay out the theft, public reaction, some art history, then not a single word on how it resloved, who actually took it and how it was found. The only hint was "an antique dealer got a letter".
It's lazy to not include enough information to make a coherent article. Links in this context are for further information, not for basic information needed to understand the article.
It actually wasn't bad in its time, and it's not about the technology its the conventions. Those purple/blue borders were immediately recognizable as links. A lot of people today wouldn't understand it, but a lot of people wouldn't understand Shakespeare today either. It's just a product of its time.
I think the issue is, it wasn’t designed for mobile devices. The images are so tiny on my phone that I didn’t even see a colored border around them until someone mentioned them and I went back and looked again. I could just barely make out the border if I squinted.
The issue is not whether someone knows the links are clickable or not. The issues were raised upthread:
> They lay out the theft, public reaction, some art history, then not a single word on how it resloved, who actually took it and how it was found. The only hint was "an antique dealer got a letter".
It's lazy to not include enough information to make a coherent article. Links in this context are for further information, not for basic information needed to understand the article.
Thar was the original complaint (and a valid one) at the start of this comment chain, but a further complaint was given about the UX, stating that it had terrible design as links were hard to recognise as links.
"How did you even know that? That honestly would not have occurred to me. What terrible UX."
That's why you're seeing discussion about UX right now. A different subject is in focus.
I've started using the web in 1996 when I was in my early 20s, but, on my phone, the border around the images was so incredibly small that I couldn't see it until I went back and looked very closely.
There's significantly more detail in the timeline[1] which is linked to from the cited page.The links aren't all that obvious if, like me, you are looking at the page on a phone.
My favourite part of this story is how the picture, once recovered, toured Italy before being returned to the Louvre. I seem to recall (can't remember the name of the book) that significant sentiment had arisen in Italy suggesting that it shouldn't be returned and the tour was an attempt to address that concern.
I visited the Louvre a few months ago and the tour guide said the news coverage of the theft (spoiler: a Louvre employee took it) is what catapulted the painting to become one of the most well-known paintings in the entire world.
I suppose it was always valuable, but what made it astronomically value was that someone stole it and then lots of people talked about it - kind of interesting to think about how things like that come to affect the value of an item.
One of the popular self help books (Covey maybe?) shares an anecdote ..
The author was spending time at the beach with family and friends, kids playing on the beach. There were enough and more toys for all kids to play with.
One little girl however spent an inordinate amount of time showering love and attention over one specific doll. And after that all other kids wanted to play with THAT doll only, ignoring all other toys.
Guess that is a commentary on human nature at some level.
FOMO meets advertising and possibly (and especially?) meet storytelling. We don't know which compelling fiction those kids developed around that doll. In another domain we observe that some TV series perform much better than the other ones available at the same time but nobody can predict which one will be the top rated.
This is the basic psychological trait exploited by advertising. Show someone important, famous, or relatable, enjoying a product, and it creates a subconscious desire in other humans to enjoy the same thing.
In this case, if the item is worth stealing, then surely it must be very valuable to someone, hence it should be valuable to everyone. This being a unique item, i.e. scarcity, pushes its value to astronomical heights. There's theoretically no limit to what someone is willing to pay or do to obtain such a piece. We see this all the time in the art world.
It went from one of the most valuable paintings in the world (top 10-20 or so) to THE most valuable painting in the world. Its estimated value is nearly a billion dollars which is almost twice the value of the one in second place, the Salvator Mundi.
Just saw it at the Louvre myself in June. It was wild how there was that somewhat long line w/ people jockeying for position at the front to take selfies with it.
I remember there was also a bit about how once it went missing there weren't any photographs of it and only a very ecstatic description and some drawings. So it was also this curiosity that peaked the value.
It was painted between 1503~1506, but in the Louvre, its labeled 1510, to account for the work that may have been done as late as 1514. It is painted on a board that is splitting, and the subject of extraordinary care.
When I went to see it, there was no line, how ever, the person viewing it beside me said there was a 4 hour wait in the morning.
Argue against me please: da Vinci's real Mona Lisa is not what's hanging in the Louvre; the original was never recovered. (This is one of my favorite conspiracies)
Then you should see the Last Supper, it's nearly 30 feet wide (yes, it's a mural). Be warned though, what you see is mostly preservation work now, Leonardo used paint that has poor aging properties.
I've been to many of the top museums of the world now, esp. after traveling through Europe this summer, and my conclusion is I don't understand what makes something a masterpiece. I get that folks like Leonardo and Rembrandt have an incredible sense for light/shadow and it shows, but most of the things that truly impressed me were from little known Enlightenment period artists.
Did you know what Van Gogh thought of The Starry Night, his top masterwork? Nothing. He referred to it in a letter to his brother as being in a pile of paintings of no consequence and didn't even bother spending the money to ship it for evaluation. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is a wonderful experience if you happen to be there... as an artist, he seemed to have great insight as to where he wanted to go and how he compared to his contemporaries. He would have surely felt the world had gone mad for elevating a failed experiment of his to such heights, but there it is.
Of course it's not just you. Plenty of people have felt very disappointed after seeing La Joconde.
I didn't, however. It is an incredible painting. Don't worry so much about the face. Look at the hands. Look at how alive they look. Da Vinci was able to make the skin feel plump and real. It shows subsurface scattering, the shadows are realistic and coherent. You can effortlessly imagine the texture of the fabric on her arms, how it sits slightly compressed on her right arm because of the angle, while more open and stretched out on her left arm. The light reflections are astonishing, and again, completely believable.
I'm an absolute nincompoop when it comes to art, but spending 5 minutes in front of this made me wish I had studied it more carefully.
the crowd is absolutely nuts there, couldn't even make it close. In many other places, the online time slots nowadays seem to work pretty well to spread out the crowd, but with the Louvre it seems that all of those 8 million annual visitors all go directly into that room, ignoring the other, like, 20 acres of that museum....
I wandered around the Louvre and didn't even think about the Mona Lisa being part of the exhibition. So I came from rooms, filled with huge paintings of old masters, into this small room, that was packed with visitors. I was astound and asked myself: "What is going on in here?", turned around and...THERE SHE WAS <gasp>!
Well placed beneath a sheet of the thickest armored glass I've ever seen! And she was so tiny! But: she smiled at me. And it was real! As, if this woman would be alive and you see her in a cafe two desks next to you!
I don't think she is so famous, because of this theft. She is famous, because she gives the viewer the impression of a real, alive person looking at you.
Not just you. It's a nice painting but an utter victim of mass-media-driven pop culture. The hysteria ruins immediate enjoyment too, how can you appreciate a painting while squeezed by tons of other people in a queue...?
Meanwhile, in another corner of the same building, the Nike of Samotracia stands alone, regal and terrifying in its splendor and 2000-year-old perfection. That is an experience worth having.
Related: I personally find "Lady with an Ermine"[1] painting by da Vinci far more appealing than Mona Lisa. (I discovered this in Walter Isaacson's outstanding bio of da Vinci.)
