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What is the Mona Lisa worth to France? Flogging the beloved artwork for the sake of a few billion euros would be a national disgrace

She's seen them through so many crisis. Credit: ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP via Getty Images

She's seen them through so many crisis. Credit: ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP via Getty Images


May 25, 2020   4 mins

On 24 August 1939, the day after the Soviet foreign minister Molotov and his German counterpart von Ribbentrop signed the pact that gave Hitler free rein to attack the West, the Louvre director, Jacques Jaujard, ordered the museum to be closed for three days. Officially, for repair. In fact, for three days and three nights, 200 Louvre staff, students from the museum’s art school and employees from La Samaritaine, the  grand magasin, carefully placed 4,000 world treasures in wooden cases.

Luckily, The Wedding at Cana by Veronese could be rolled around a cylinder. So could Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation of Napoleon. But Delacroix’s Crusaders, Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa and all the Rubenses were too fragile and had to be hauled away on a special open truck made to transport the set designs and murals of France’s state theatre company, the Comédie Française. The Raft of the Medusa, weighing nearly one and a half tons, stood in the open-air truck covered only by a giant blanket.

Masterpieces were categorised in order of importance: a yellow circle for very valuable ones, a green circle for major artworks and a red circle for world treasures. The white case containing the Mona Lisa was marked with three red circles. In a letter to the curator who was in charge of travelling with the painting also known in France as La Joconde — and who did not yet know the full burden of his responsibility — Jaujard broke the news by telling him: “Old friend, your convoy will be made of eight trucks. I have to tell you that the Chenu truck which will be departing from 5 rue de la Terrasse, with the plate number 2162RM2, contains a case with the letters MN written in black. It is the Mona Lisa.” Leonardo da Vinci’s finest work was travelling in an ambulance specially fitted with elastic-rubber-sprung suspension.

A convoy of 203 vehicles transporting 1,862 wooden cases set out one morning in late August to eleven castles in France — where they would wait, anonymous and secure, for what would come. Grand châteaux on the Loire, such as Chambord and Cheverny, were used, but Jaujard also requisitioned more inconspicuous and privately-owned estates conveniently ‘lost’ in the French countryside, far from any strategic locations. Every convoy had a curator and staff attached to it. Their mission: to look after the art collections in their new homes for as long as was necessary. Whole families were displaced and relocated. For those dedicated museum employees, it was an adventure that would last more than five years.

Did they ever ask themselves what the world treasures they were guarding with their lives were worth? The most expensive painting ever sold at auction, Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, was bought for $450 million in 2017. What would the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa, be worth if France sold it? A rhetorical question? Not for French tech entrepreneur Stéphane Distinguin who estimates its value at €50 billion (£44.7 billion) and thinks the French State should sell it to fund post-Covid recovery. His thinking is as simplistic as his maths:

“As an entrepreneur and a taxpayer, I know that all the billions spent in the covid crisis are real and will necessarily cost us. An obvious idea is to sell off a valuable asset at the highest price possible, but one that is the least critical as possible to our future.”

Mr Distinguin is wrong on two counts. Even if sold for €50 billion, the Mona Lisa would offer only a brief financial respite from France’s huge post-Covid public debt. It would certainly not cover all the losses. Besides, to say that the Mona Lisa serves little purpose in our future is to be blind to the ageless, universal and immaterial quality of art.

This doesn’t mean of course that artists or cultural institutions can’t support war or pandemic efforts. After Albert Uderzo, co-creator of Asterix, died in March, his widow announced she would auction five original drawings estimated at €100,000 (£90,000) each to support health caregivers and French hospitals. The sale will be held in Paris on 26 May.

Likewise, the Mobilier National, the office responsible for furnishing official buildings in France, which owns 130,000 precious rugs, ceramics, desks, chairs, chandeliers, said it would hold an auction on 20 and 21 September. For sale will be 100 art objects dating back to the 19th century — and of little heritage and historical value. All the proceeds will contribute to the national effort to support hospitals.

Those initiatives should be encouraged. However, to suggest that France should do away with its most precious and totemic possessions, simply because they are worth billions and could stopper a financial hole, is a step too far.

The Mona Lisa tells stories that keep people warm in moments of crisis or during national catastrophes. Its sheer existence — the fact it has survived hundreds of years of wars and tumult — helps us live through tough or strange times. It is not just a work of great beauty and a masterpiece from history’s most celebrated artist, it is also an inspiration. In fact, in the national imagination, certain inanimate objects such as the Mona Lisa take a life of their own. They are family.

The French take pride in knowing that it was a French King, François I — an artistic visionary and an intrepid young sovereign — who saw genius in Leonardo da Vinci. At the time, the Pope had abandoned the artist, and everybody in Florence was looking down on Da Vinci. France, a great patron of the arts, gave the old Leonardo a grandiose shelter to freely create in the 1510s, until his death in 1519.

When I started writing my book Left Bank: Art, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-1950, I knew I had to start with the Mona Lisa, and how she escaped from the hands of the Nazis thanks to the brave and visionary Louvre director.

The Louvre finally reopened to the public on 10 July 1945. Its first post-war exhibition was called, simply, ‘Great Masterpieces’. Its collections repatriated from their hiding places, the French public realised that not one piece had been damaged, thanks to their saviour-in-chief, Jacques Jaujard, and the thousand anonymous keepers defended them. This was an emotional reunion.

So, too, had been the return of a well-wrapped-up acquaintance three weeks earlier. The photographer Pierre Jahan had been allowed to take pictures of a moment that would immediately travel the world and make headlines: the opening of a white poplar case marked with three red dots. Waterproof layers of protection were carefully removed, one by one, until the last one, a thin sheet of fire-retardant fabric woven from asbestos fibres, appeared. It was then torn open, revealing the face of the Mona Lisa. She had come home, finally.

When the Louvre, the most visited museum in the world, reopens after Covid-19 is tamed at last — hopefully not in six years time as during the Second World War — many French visitors will no doubt feel emotional too. Those emotions are part of a nation’s history. They are priceless.


Agnes Poirier is a French journalist, writer and broadcaster.

AgnesCPoirier

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Basil Chamberlain
Basil Chamberlain
4 years ago

If we have to descend to the level of the cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, let’s not forget that the Louvre actually makes a substantial net profit for the French state – especially once one factors in the reality that people go to Paris to see the Mona Lisa and their presence there also supports local restaurants, hotels, cafes, etc.

http://www3.grips.ac.jp/~cu

“The Louvre’s impact on the French economy varies from €936 million to €1.157 billion. Tax receipts for the French state range from €119 million to €203 million, which may result in a change in its financial position of between €37 million to €82 million. The net number of jobs created varies from 10,292 under the most adverse scenario to 21,225 under the most favorable scenario. Lastly, if we look at the data in terms of averages, weighting the three options equally, we can conceive of the different types of impact as very favorable: an impact of €938 million, a net tax gain of €39 million, between 12,738 and 18,090 jobs created. The impact is therefore highly substantial in terms of public finances and employment, both of which play an essential role in current debates and sustainable development:

– The Louvre generates proceeds for the French state, in spite of the budgetary expenses (subsidies) and tax deductions (in consideration for sponsorship) it entails;

– The Louvre guarantees the existence of a significant number of jobs, at a very low cost for public finances at a time when employment is a major concern for political and economic agents.”

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago

Perhaps the British Museum should now follow the example of the Louvre?

Stephen Follows
Stephen Follows
4 years ago

Maybe, but I think we have to accept now that the arts, and especially the high arts, are completely finished now. We will never see them again.

Basil Chamberlain
Basil Chamberlain
4 years ago

Well, I think that’s overly pessimistic; continental museums are opening up again right now; even some concerts will take place in Vienna next month. I expect major arts institutions, particularly in capital cities will survive. A goodly part of tourism all over Europe is motivated by museums, artistic events, and historic architecture, and I think most governments will see supporting that as a Keynesian investment. Private institutions funded by endowments will also presumably be OK. In the UK, we probably need to see museums and art galleries begin to charge admission fees, as they do everywhere else in the world (it’s inconsistent that they don’t in the first place; after all, I cheerfully stump up for a theatre ticket).

What will be clearly in serious trouble are the smaller and provincial institutions. I have no doubt the Royal Opera House will re-open, but I wonder about Opera North…

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago

Whatever… the size, reach and financial commitments and promises of the French state are so great that you could sell off all the artworks in France and it would only keep the show on the road for a few months at best. The same applies to more or less every other state in the west.

Stephen Follows
Stephen Follows
4 years ago

The other objection which you don’t raise is: who could possibly afford to pay £44.7 billion now, anyway?

Basil Chamberlain
Basil Chamberlain
4 years ago

If there is any private buyer who can afford it, then it raises serious questions about the imbalance between private and public wealth in the modern world. The state ought to be in a position to buy up private assets right now!

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago

They should take the money and replace the painting with a portrait of Macron. That will bring in the crowds.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
4 years ago

Reading the title of this excellent piece I couldn’t help thinking “What would the Mona Lisa be worth to Italy?’ but they won’t be getting it whatever they think of their Italian painter’s work being detained in Paris.

It raises the question of how the COVID-19 debt will be paid off. But we might as well as consider all debt because public and private debt is now so stupefyingly huge that it will kill any economic recovery. There’re only really two ways out, other than decades of stagnation, and that is a bit of hyperinflation, or some sort of debt jubilee. I don’t have any debt but I would rather go for the debt jubilee as the least injurious way out from under this suffocating debt.

Owen Morgan
Owen Morgan
4 years ago

Just for once, the French are entitled to the Mona Lisa. As the author noted, François I invited Leonardo to France and gave him a home, near Chenonceaux, I believe, where he spent his final years.

matthew hilton
matthew hilton
4 years ago

Well, much as I admire the spirit and Gallic fire with which you defend your thesis and as an aficianodo of France Culture (the radio channel) smile at the way you slip in a reference to your book, there is no reason why the comfortable museumocrats and their crowds of smelly gaping sheep should be spared a Covid-19 shock or two. Turbulence is for everyone, n’est-ce pas?