Louvre’s decision to move Mona Lisa is a misleading act of snobbery | Mona Lisa

W.Hat a wonderful headache for a museum to have. Louvre in Paris gets so many visitors that it takes drastic measures to cope with, which includes moving its most famous treasure to a dedicated space where fans can visit without entering the main museum. It will no longer suck oxygen from other art.

Nearly 9 million visitors a year power through Louvre, and it is believed that 80% of them are looking for Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, better known as La Gioconde, even better as Mona Lisa.

I’m worried that Louvre is trying to solve a problem that isn’t really a problem. Ask Britain’s museums if high visitors are a bad thing: they still haven’t restored their pre-pandemic crowds.

The decision that was dramatically announced by Emmanuel Macron to move Mona Lisa to a special hygienically isolated gallery where Les Idiots Who flows to take selfies in front of it does not bother more cultivated visitors who want to study art in a rushed atmosphere is a misleading snobs. It can ruin Louvre’s ecosystem as a place where high art becomes popular culture.

On my last visit to the Louvre I made a line to see Leonardo’s masterpiece. Why wouldn’t I? To get to it, after the security checks to enter the court under the glass pyramid, you go through the Denon wing and choose one of several paths – maybe past the victory for Samothrace or Gerichault’s fleet of Medusa – until you reach the space where Mona Lisa is sealed behind the plate glass.

It’s Bully. Barriers hold back to the crowd, many of which appear to be fixed to get photos. But who am I, and who is Macron, to assume that none of these people feel or see or discover anything from the experience?

Noise and hostling were there, but I was still able to see Leonardo’s painting, a quiet mystery in the heart of Hubbub. Her smile personally is so much warmer than it looks in reproduction. I realized, more clearly than ever before, this is truly a sweet portrait of an ordinary person who posed for Leonardo in Florence in 1503 – and made a magical impression on him.

It is true that Mona Lisa makes it difficult to pay attention to the paintings of Veronese, Titian and others in the same room. But it’s not because of crowds. It is Mona Lisa who does this by being so convincing.

In my experience, crowds do not spoil Louvre. They give it life. Another measure planned – to open a new input – sounds more useful as it can be a slow queue coming into the IM Peis Pyramid.

But once you are inside, this museum’s huge gives an exciting impression of unlimited wealth. There are always plenty of visitors to the gallery with French history paintings. Other traips past Botticelli Frescoes, Caravaggio canvases – not to mention Leonardo da Vinci’s other paintings in the collection.

If you want peace in Louvre, seek its northern Renaissance galleries or its collection of Chardin Still Life scenes. Even better, go downstairs from Mona Lisa, where people pass Michelangelo’s dying and rebellious slaves with barely a look. You can look at these masterpieces in peace.