FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS – The mysterious association International Restitutions presented one official request for the Mona Lisa to be returned from the Louvre to unspecified heirs of Leonardo da Vinci.
The application has little or no chance of being accepted, but the Council of State, the highest French administrative authority, will still have to examine it in the next few days. In a precedent concerning another work, the Council had responded that International Restitutions, obscure association based in a small village near Perpignan in the south of France, he had no right to act.
The Mona Lisa is found at the Louvre since 1797 And in French collections since 1516. King Francis I obtained it as a gift from Leonardo da Vinciin exchange for his protection and a pension, after the Tuscan genius had fallen out of favor with the Medici and had taken refuge in France.
In these years France proceeded with the return of several works, in many cases paintings stolen by the Nazis and returned to the heirs of the legitimate owners. President Emmanuel Macronduring a speech in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, he then encouraged African states to submit requests for the return of works taken from France during the colonial era. But it is not clear how the request on the Mona Lisa can be accepted.
The newspaper Le Parisien asked the art critic Alessandro Vezzosi, founder of the Ideal Leonardo da Vinci Museum, who in 2021, after long research, identified 14 direct descendants of Leonardo, who are still alive. «From a legal point of view, Leonardo’s descendants might perhaps have a chanceat best, to get a say in Leonardo’s image in trade, in derivative products – says Vezzosi -. But the story of the Mona Lisa doesn’t concern them. It has been owned by France for five centuries, and even if there is a small doubt about the proof of purchase, there’s no chance that this property be called into question.”
Also thanks to the Mona Lisa the Louvre is the most important and visited museum in the world, with 10 million admissions per year. Almost 80 percent of visitors queue to see the Mona Lisa, the target of demonstrations by environmental activists and a ubiquitous image in dozens of museum-related merchandising products.
