The enigmatic smile of the Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, at its longtime home of the Louvre in Paris,has captured the attention of the public for centuries.
Few people realize however that on a warm summer morning in Paris in the year 1911, the painting was stolen — and remained missing for over two years.
Press hysteria surrounding this unusual robbery made the masterwork of Da Vinci’s quite simply the most famous painting in the world.
But much is still murky about the circumstances of its theft and recovery.
Join The Gilded Gentleman as he takes a look at this case and and attempts to piece it together.
The Gilded Gentleman Podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Overcast.
The Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s stoic portrait and one of the most valuable paintings on earth, came to America during the winter of 1963, a single-picture loan that was both a special favor to Jackie Kennedy and a symbolic tool during tense conversations between the United States and France about nuclear arms.
The first stop was the National Gallery in Washington DC, where over a half million people spent hours in line to gaze at the famous smile.
Then, on February 7, 1963, she made her debut to the public at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the medieval sculpture hall, for a month-long exhibition that would become one of the museums most attended shows in history.
New York tourist Mona Lisa
In the second half of this week’s show, we’re joined by Patrick Bringley, a former security guard at the Metropolitan Museum and a current tour guide. His book All The Beauty In The World: The Metropolitan Museum and Me, published by Simon & Schuster, recounts a decade of purpose, sorrow and epiphany while working in America’s largest museum.
For more information on the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, check out our podcast from last fall celebrating the museum’s 150th anniversary:
And for some dazzling backstory on the Mona Lisa and just exactly why she’s so famous, check out the Gilded Gentleman’s podcast The Theft of the Mona Lisa, Paris 1911.
Here’s an excerpt of the article in which this week’s podcast is based:
On that first day, thousands lined up outside in the freezing cold to catch a glimpse of the iconic painting; the first in line, a taxi driver named Joseph Lasky, got there at 4:30 in the morning.
By week’s end, already a quarter of a million people had visited the museum to see the Italian masterpiece.
Accommodating such a famous painting required some unprecedented changes in protocol. As a favor to the two governments, no admission fee was charged to view the painting, and weekday hours were extended until 9 pm each night.
Thousands of schoolchildren crammed the museum every morning, funneling by the modest-sized painting in a daze.
Museum director James Rorimer told the New Yorker, “The dirt we expect, from them and everybody else! The accumulation of dust from scuffling shoes! We’ll have literally balls of dust.”
From reports, it sounds like they got the dust and air quality under control. The painting was secured by bulletproof glass and a couple Secret Service agents.
A line down the block to see Mona. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum
But the museum sprinkler system almost created an international incident by nearly destroying the painting in an unplanned shower.
According to a memoir by former museum director Thomas Hoving, he arrived at the museum storeroom one morning to find people frantically scurrying around with towels.
“No one ever discovered why, but some time during the night one of the fire sprinklers in the ceiling broke its glass ampoule….The Mona Lisa, according to the Louvre official, was ok. He told me that the thick glass covering it had acted like an effective ¦raincoat.”
By the time the painting was packed up aboard the US United States for her journey back to the Louvre, the Mona Lisa had been seen by well over one million people.
According to the New York Times, the museum was able to identify the one-millionth visitor — one Arthur Pomerantz of New Rochelle — who was given a reproduction of the painting and gifts for his children.
The final tally, according to the Times:
This article was originally published on this site in July 2013.
Within the New York City of Edward Hopper‘s imagination, the skyscrapers have vanished, the sidewalks are mysteriously wide and all the diners and Chop Suey restaurants are sparsely populated with well-dressed lonely people.
In this art-filled episode of the Bowery Boys, Tom and Greg look at Hopper’s life, influence and specific fascination with the city, inspired by the recent show Edward Hopper’s New Yorkat the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Hopper, a native of the Hudson River town of Nyack, painted New York City for over half a decade. In reality, the city experienced Prohibition and the Jazz Age, two world wars and the arrival of automobiles. But not in Hopper’s world.
In his most famous work Nighthawks (1942), figures from a dreamlike film appear trapped in an aquarium-shaped diner. But Hopper has captured something else in this iconic painting: fear and paranoia. No wonder he’s considered a huge influence on Hollywood film noir and detective stories.
Hopper painted New York from his studio overlooking Washington Square Park, and both he and his wife Josephine Nivison Hopper would become true fixtures of the Greenwich Village scene.
PLUS: Tom visits the Edward Hopper House Museumin Nyack, New York, to talk the artist’s early life with executive director Kathleen Motes Bennewitz. And Greg finds some of the hidden meanings in Hopper’s paintings thanks to American art historian Rena Tobey.
Edward Hopper in his studio. Courtesy Everett/ShutterstockCirca 1947. Photo courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art
From the Edward Hopper House Museum in Nyack, NY:
Photos by Tom Meyers
From inside Edward Hopper’s studio at 3 Washington Square North (from Open House NY 2019). Information on the studio here.
Although Hopper’s painting are mostly from the domain of his imagination, you can see some of his architectural subjects on the streets today. For more information, visit this interesting article posted at Village Preservation.
Bleecker and Carmine StreetEarly Sunday Morning, 1930Greenwich Avenue and Seventh AvenueNighthawks, 1942Judson Memorial ChurchNovember, Washington Square
FURTHER LISTENING
After finishing this show on Edward Hopper, dive back into our back catalog and experience other shows related to Hopper and his subjects:
Early one spring day in 1922, while dutifully posing at the Art Students League on West 57th Street, Santa Claus had a fatal heart attack in front of a classroom of students.
Above — He knows when you’ve been bad or good: A Christmas issue of Judge Magazine from 1919 by Guy Lowy, who studied at the Art Students League and very likely used Mnason for his model. (Courtesy Jon Williamson)
“The man who was Santa Claus is dead,” said the New York Tribune. “He was a man of many names, but at the Art Students League, where he posed for beginners, and in the studios of the best known artists, where he was sent for when a ‘Santa Claus type’ was needed, he was known as Mnason, the first ‘n’ being silent.”
They called him Mnason, although his full name was even more spectacular — Mnason T. Huntsman. (Or Huntsman T. Mnason or even Paul Mnason. His aliases were legion.)
Man of Mystery
The burly artists model lent his body to the ages; thanks to the scores of influential artists who hired him for Christmas projects, today’s modern Santa Claus probably looks more like Mnason than perhaps any other actual human being in history.*
The poet Arthur Chapman declared: “It’s no exaggeration to say that Mnason posed for most of the Santa Claus pictures that have been made in recent years. And he figured in a good many for which he did not actually pose — as such pictures have been copied from originals for which Mnason was the model.
“Probably there isn’t a man today whose picture has been cut out more times and is treasured in more scrapbooks.”
Mnason, the definitive Santa Claus of the 1910s and early 1920s, was a true “man of mystery” for many who painted and drew him. A few knew the details of his past; perhaps it held the secret to his magnetic allure, to the deep, ancient gleam in his eye.
For Mnason was a former religious cult leader and proselytizer who had served time in jail for child abduction and religious blasphemy, and once he was actually tarred and feathered by an angry mob. He was a charismatic to some, a psychotic to many others.
Below: Painter Kenyon Cox and his students at the Art Students League in 1887, a couple decades before the arrival of Mnason (Courtesy aaa.si.edu)
Making A Cult Leader
Mnason was born in Pennsylvania sometime in the 1850s, orphaned at eight years old. His early religious teachings were strict but conventional for the period.
In the 1880s, he worked for New York’s Sunday Closing League, visiting New York shops and saloons to ensure they were not selling anything too amoral on church day. In 1883, he testified that one shop owner illegally sold cigarettes to young boys, but not before the judge excoriated Mnason for lying on the stand.
At some point between that moment and 1888, Mnason was “inspired and bidden by God” to become a preacher. His message was not well received; at one point, the “wild and absurd behavior” of this “obstreperous” man of God got him thrown into jail for disorderly conduct.
By then, he had started a religious commune called the Lord’s Farm in Pascack Valley in New Jersey, where he began to attract (or lure) a young, impressionable flock.
He called himself “The Holy One” or “The Modern Christ” and granted bizarre nicknames to his most loyal followers. Collectively, they were called the Angel Dancers, or the Church of the Living God.
In 1888, Mnason was arrested “on the charge of blasphemy,” and of enticing two young women who claimed they “were obliged to do anything he required.” He was reportedly tarred and feathered by irate residents. (It is at this point that you might notice the odd coincidence of the name Mnason and ‘Manson’, as in Charles.)
Mnason T. Huntsman, from an image used in the New York Tribune
The Angel Dancers
Even still, the Angel Dancers managed to attract on oddball list of adherents, including a local farmer’s wife and her two children. Eventually, according to a 1893 New York Times article, “the band was increased by two long-haired men, who called themselves ‘Silas’ and ‘John the Baptist’.
This fanatical cult would reportedly practice ‘angel dancing’, “scantily robed and waving a huge blanket with which to drive away the devil.”
Also notable to the press of the day: Mnason and his flock were all vegetarians. “Nothing save what grows in or on the ground may be eaten.” [source]
From The Times in Philadelphia, November 25, 1895
The entire lot were arrested in April 1893 for attempting to swindle the aforementioned farmer, although it’s obvious that some religious intolerance was embedded within the charge as well.
The affidavit read: “The conspirators deny, ridicule and curse all regular religion and religious customs, recognize no Sabbath, and set up a false god of their own, declaring the said Mnason to be the only and living God.”
From a syndicated article which ran in the Ironwood News-Record in Michigan, January 11, 1896, courtesy Newspapers.com
The Compound
A few years later, the Angel Dancers had taken over the farmhouse and had grown to a membership of nine males and nineteen females, with two children.
After the reported death of a child in 1897, the Times intoned, “No physician was called to be of any service. Mnason is ‘the Christ’. The dancers are vegetarians.”
Another ugly abduction case reared its head in 1900, when two “little girls” were taken from the compound and then kept in jail for months in order to testify against Mnason. The cult leader seemed to survive these charges, too
From the same article as above.
The Lord’s Farm became so notorious that by 1909, the state found a good excuse to evict Mnason and his followers. The charismatic moved to New York City and briefly opened a church for black parishioners.
It is then that former ‘Modern Christ’ then disappears, for a time, from public view. But the Times in 1909 noted the following: “Mnason is a man of many aliases.”
The Art Students Leave, photo by Jim Henderson, Wikimedia Commons
Finally, he popped up again, in 1916, at the Art Students League, and not unnoticed.
The New York Sun mocked his new profession (headline pictured below): “[R]ecently he had turned himself into Santa Claus or King Lear or any other whiskered person that the embryo John Sargents of the Art Students League wish him to be¦.”
It’s no surprise he would find his way into an art collective — he was a vegetarian, after all — and his timing was rather perfect, given his particular look and body size.
Making Santa Claus
The character of Santa Claus had gone through a major style makeover in the late 19th century.
His annual routine already immortalized in the popular verse A Visit From St. Nicholas — penned by the godfather of the Chelsea neighborhood Clement Clarke Moore — magazine and postcard illustrators began morphing the popular Christmas figure from a thickly robed saint to a child-friendly, candy-colored superhero.
This change came about through the hands of American artists and illustrators, led by Harper’s Weekly artist Thomas Nast in New York. Some of the modern look and mythos is credited to Nast, his influential pen elaborating on Santa’s girth (eventually to rest on near-corpulency) and placing his residence in the North Pole.
By the early 20th century, Santa’s physical characteristics were locked in place, but his spirit and personality were still very much uncertain. Should Santa be energetic or world weary? Wise or playful? Approachable like a parent, or unfathomable like a god?
Perfect Pose
Many of New York’s great illustrators of the period were associated with the prestigious Art Students League, and it was here that Mnason contributed his own sparkle to the characters, as artists recommended the man for his poise, mystery and sparkle.
“They found in him the ideal type, on account of his snowy beard, his bearing, the jolly twinkle in his eye, his fine color and his intelligence.”
Blow: J.C Leyendecker‘s 1919 cover for the Saturday Evening Post. You can easily tell Leyendecker’s influence on later Evening Post artist Norman Rockwell. Given the artist’s connection to the ASL, Mnason very likely posed for this painting.
It’s clear that many of these legendary artists were aware of some version of their Santa’s past. “Mnason would hint to his artists friends regarding certain experiences in his life in which his pronounced and individualistic religious views played a part.” [source]
One year, he was even hired as a department store Santa where he notably espoused his religious views to the children who had come to present their Christmas wishes.
And To All A Good Night
His days of Lord’s Farm were behind him, but Mnason kept writing religious verse while living suitably on his artist-model wages. For years, he was passed among New York’s most renown illustrators, who claimed him the iconic visage of the holiday’s most jolly proponent.
“Nothing could dampen his cheerfulness, but behind his smile there was an element of mystery which the embodiment of Santa Claus maintained to the last.”
When he died in 1922, Mnason had been drawn and painted as Santa Claus dozens of times.
Eventually, Santa Claus would go through his final evolution in the 1930s, thanks to artist Haddon Sondblum, hired by Coca-Cola for their colorful advertising campaigns.
Sondblum’s iconic depiction is directly influenced by Moore’s famous poem, and but equally so by the dozens of artists and magazine illustrators before him, most of which who had used Mnason as their inspiration.
*A retired salesman named Lou Prentice was used by Haddon to create early versions of his Coca-Cola Santa and so might lay claim to being the most important physical inspiration. But Mnason was used by more artists and within several pivotal publications of the day.
The Bowery Boys Road Trip to the Hudson Valley mini-series, exploring stories of American history along the Hudson River, is now complete. Catch up on all three episodes — and join us on Patreon for a special ‘behind the scenes’ episode:
On the Trail of the Croton Aqueduct
Welcome to the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail, 26.5 miles of dusty pathway through some of the most interesting and beautiful towns and villages of Westchester County.
But this is more than a linear park. The trail runs atop — and sometimes alongside — the original Croton Aqueduct, a sloping water system which opened in 1842, inspired by ancient Roman technology which delivered fresh water to the growing metropolis over three dozen miles south.
Locations featured: New Croton Dam, the Double Arch Bridge in Ossining, the Keeper’s House in Dobbs Ferry
Hyde Park: The Roosevelts on the Hudson
Hyde Park, New York was the home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States. He was born here, he lived here throughout his life, and he’s buried here — alongside his wife Eleanor Roosevelt.
But it was more than simply a home.
The Hyde Park presence of the Roosevelts expands outwardly from the Roosevelt ancestral mansion of Springwood, over hundreds of forested acres from former farmlands on the eastern side to the shores of the Hudson River on the west.
Locations featured: Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, FDR Presidential Library and Museum, Top Cottage, Val-Kill Cottage, all in Hyde Park
The Hudson River School: An American Art Revolution
Two landmarks to American art history sit on either side of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge over the Hudson River — the homes of visionary artists Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church.
Cole and Church were leaders of the Hudson River School, a collective of 19th century American painters captivated by natural beauty and wide-open spaces. Many of these paintings, often of a massive size, depicted fantastic views of the Hudson River Valley where many of the artists lived.
Locations featured: Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, Olana State Historic Site in Hudson
Tom interviewing Amy Hausmann of the Olana State Historic Site
Road Trip to the Hudson Valley: Aftermath
In this Patreon exclusive, Greg and Tom look back on their adventures in the Hudson Valley and give you a behind-the-scenes look at their journeys along the Croton Aqueduct Trail, Hyde Park and the towns of Catskill and Hudson.
PLUS: Some tips on how to make these trips yourself this year.
EPISODE 341 Celebrating the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 150th anniversary year of its founding — certainly one of the strangest years in its extraordinary existence.
The Met is really the king of New York attractions, with visitors heading up to Central Park and streaming through the doors by the millions to gasp at the latest blockbuster exhibitions and priceless works of art and history.
And who doesn’t love getting lost at the Met for an afternoon — wandering from the Greek and Roman galleries to the imposing artifacts within the Arms and Armor collection and the treasures of the Asian Art rooms?
The Theodore Weston addition to the Met 1893, J.S. Johnston, Library of Congress
But this museum has a few surprising secrets in its history — and more than a few skeletons (or are those mummies?) in its closet.
WITH Ancient temples, fabulous fashions, classical relics, Dutch masters, controversial exhibitions and the decorative trappings of the Gilded Age.
November 1928, photo courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art
AND Find out how the museum building has evolved over the years, employing some of the greatest architects in American history.
PLUS An interview with the Met’s Andrea Bayer, Deputy Director for Collections and Administration, on the museum’s celebratory exhibition Making the Met 1870-2020.
How do you launch an anniversary celebration during a pandemic and lockdown?
Listen today on your favorite podcast player:
Opening reception in the picture gallery at 681 Fifth Avenue, February 20, 1872; wood-engraving published in Frank Leslie’s Weekly, March 9, 1872‘The Barn’, the original Met from Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art1900, Detroit Pub Co, Library of CongressThe Richard Morris Hunt addition to the Met, 1903, Detroit Pub Co, Library of CongressThe Great Hall, 1907, Library of CongressThe Met in 1920, with the southern wing in place. Museum of the City of New YorkThe Met in 1983, Getty Images
Some excellent footage from the 1920s of the Met’s Egyptian excavations
The Temple of Dendur. photo by Greg YoungThe American Wing sculpture garden at night, photo by Greg YoungBranch Bank entrance, 2012, photo by Greg YoungWashington Crossing the Delaware, taken 2017, photo by Greg YoungDendur at night, 2018, photo by Greg YoungThe Met at Christmas, 2018, photo by Greg YoungThe European sculpture garden at night, with views of the original 19th century facade in red brick. 2018, photo by Greg Young
Views from Making the Met (photos by Greg Young):
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FURTHER LISTENING
The Met was a bit behind the times when it came to celebrating Impressionism but New Yorkers could take a gander at the ‘shocking’ output from Europe — as well as examples from the New York’ Ashcan School — at the Armory Show of 1913.
The Met is a twin institution to the American Museum of Natural History which shares a similar origin story.
In the second half of our Fifth Avenue Mansions series, we look at how the wealthy mansions of Fifth Avenue left midtown and headed to the Upper East Side.
The World’s Fair of 1964-65 at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was a major American event forward-looking in its intent and, in many ways, backwards in its practice. Â In particular, Robert Moses did not care for cheap carnival amusements, nor did he care for music or art that was particular edgy or controversial. Moses’ tastes ruled supreme over the Fair as he held veto power over any works that were in “extreme bad taste or low standard.”
There was no pavilion dedicated to art although several independent partners funded their own art displays. Â The New York State Pavilion presented the work of brand-new pop artists; an objectionable piece by Andy Warhol entitled Thirteen Wanted Men was eventually painted over (although it was the governor Nelson Rockefeller who objected in this case).
Moses did eventually throw out one surprising piece of artwork — Tomorrow Forever by Margaret Keane.
The Keane painting was to have been displayed in this building at the fair.**
Keane was known for her bizarre and haunting images of children and animals with large empty eyes. Â During the 1960s, her husband Walter Keane claimed to be the creator of her paintings. Â It was he who was announced as the painter of this macabre work, chosen in February 1964 to grace the Fair’s Hall of Education. Â The venue devoted to the future of schools would feature a scale model of an elementary school from the year 2000, a playground with “futuristic climbing structures,” and from the entrance way, the terrifying painting you see above.
The work by Keane, representing “something which would be symbolic for the aspiration of children,” was not exactly heralded as the pinnacle of artistic expression in 1964.
The New York Times’ art critic John Canaday could barely conceal his disgust at this “grotesque announcement,” adding, “Mr. Keane is the painter who enjoys international celeÂbration for grinding out formÂula pictures of wideâ€eyed children of such appalling sentimentality that his product has become synonymous among critics with the very definition of tasteless hack work.”  [source]
To be fair, Canaday had only seen a photograph of the painting, which depicts an endless sea of soul-crushing zombie children, rising out of a morose and barren wasteland. “That’s true,” he confessed to a Life Magazine reporter. “It’s normally a principle of mine never to judge just by a photograph, but in this case it didn’t matter.”
Moses seemed to agree with Canaday, demanding the Hall of Education cancel the planned installation before it was even mounted. Â Thanks to Canaday’s protest, Moses’ office was inundated with letters from angry intellectuals and aesthetes. “[T]he perpetrators of this art burlesque,” wrote Joseph James Akston, “expose us to veritable scandal sure to incur ridicule and laughter of the whole civilized world with possible exception of Russians.” [source]
Keane, who of course didn’t paint the artwork attributed to him, nonetheless seemed to revel in the critical potshots. Â The following year, he issued a press releases from San Francisco and Tahiti, declaring himself “the American Gauguin.” Â Canaday would continue to take aim at Keane’s kitschy work. Â Imagine how Canaday felt when he discovered that Walter hadn’t even painted the works he so deliciously despised?
Margaret eventually left her husband and sued for rightful ownership of her artwork.
NOTE: I’m being a little irreverent in calling the painting “terrifying” as the artist clearly intended the subjects to be starving, sad children. Â However, the passage of time has been a little strange to Keane’s legacy. Â She is perhaps more beloved than ever — there’s a new Tim Burton film coming out this year — but the flagrant sentimentality of the work has given way to their spectacular kitsch value.
** The Hall of Education picture courtesy the blog Little Owl Ski which has a few other nifty World’s Fair pictures.
Mona mania: New Yorkers line up outside the Met for the hottest ticket in town in 1963
While many artistic institutions will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Armory Show next month, New York lovers of more classical paintings will be celebrating another milestone — the 50th anniversary of the Mona Lisa‘svisit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
On February 7, 1963, she made her debut to the public at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the medieval sculpture hall, for a month-long exhibition that would become one of the museums most attended shows in history. On that first day, thousands lined up outside in the freezing cold to catch a glimpse of the iconic painting; the first in line, a taxi driver named Joseph Lasky, got there at 4:30 in the morning. By week’s end, already a quarter of a million people had visited the museum to see the Italian masterpiece.
Accommodating such a famous painting required some unprecedented changes in protocol. As a favor to the two governments, no admission fee was charged to view the painting, and weekday hours were extended until 9 pm each night.
Thousands of schoolchildren crammed the museum every morning, funneling by the modest-sized painting in a daze. Museum director James Rorimer told the New Yorker, “The dirt we expect, from them and everybody else! The accumulation of dust from scuffling shoes! We’ll have literally balls of dust.”
From reports, it sounds like they got the dust and air quality under control. The painting was secured by bulletproof glass and a couple Secret Service agents. But the museum sprinkler system almost created an international incident by nearly destroying the painting in an unplanned shower.
According to a memoir by former museum director Thomas Hoving, he arrived at the museum storeroom one morning to find people frantically scurrying around with towels.
“No one ever discovered why, but some time during the night one of the fire sprinklers in the ceiling broke its glass ampoule….The Mona Lisa, according to the Louvre official, was ok. He told me that the thick glass covering it had acted like an effective…raincoat.”
That incident was never leaked to the press. Actually, this would have been a good time to conceal something from the media as there was a newspaper strike at this time, shuttering many publications.
By the time the painting was packed up aboard the US United States for her journey back to the Louvre, the Mona Lisa had been seen by well over one million people. According to the New York Times, the museum was able to identify the one-millionth visitor — one Arthur Pomerantz of New Rochelle — who was given a reproduction of the painting and gifts for his children.
I’m working on a very art-themed podcast which should be ready for release this Friday. The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be a supporting player in this week’s show, so please enjoy these early photos of the original building, opened in 1880 and designed by Calvert Vaux (to better accentuate his park) and Jacob Wray Mould, of Belvedere Castle fame.
The building was considered out-of-fashion almost as soon as it was finished, and within a couple decades Richard Morris Hunt had created the museum’s more expansive Beaux-Arts facade and wings. What you see here is the old building, next to the new facade, before it was fully consumed by additions.
The postcard and the photo below it gives you a good idea of where the new additions sat in relation to the old building. And this is before the wings were added.
The top four images are courtesy New York Public Library. The last is courtesy Library of Congress.
