She’s one of the world’s most recognisable faces, with a smile that’s been printed on mugs, bags and T-shirts across the globe. But she’s only left her country a handful of times, and has stayed in the same room for 14 years.
We’re talking about Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s Renaissance masterpiece that has been on display in the same room since 2005.
But it’s being moved overnight on Tuesday from its usual home, the Salle des États in the Louvre in Paris to another room in the same museum. From Wednesday until October, it will be displayed in the Galerie Médicis, so that the Salle des États can be renovated.
Although the painting isn’t going very far, moving it is still a delicate operation.
The Louvre has been undergoing massive renovations for the past five years. The museum says more than 34,000 sq m (366,000 sq ft) has been renovated so far, including 17,579 sq m of gallery space.
It’s currently the turn of the Salle des États.
Unsurprisingly, given its famous resident, the Salle des États is the Louvre’s most-visited room – which means that it’s suffered a fair bit of wear and tear in the 14 years since its last major refurbishment.
Work on the room actually began in January, but the renovators have so far been able to work around Mona Lisa. Now, they need to carry out work on the wall behind the painting.
Another painting in the same room, Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, is going to stay in a protective case for the entire time the renovations are carried out.
The Galerie Médicis, where Mona Lisa is moving, is one of the museum’s largest rooms.
The short answer is “yes” – but the long answer is, “not that much harder than most artworks”.
Catriona Pearson, exhibitions manager at the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, tells BBC News: “The risk doesn’t change regardless of the value, we always move things in the same way – which is to say, very, very carefully!”
She explains that gallery workers try to limit how much they move an artwork, and keep the number of people handling it to a minimum if they can, because “the more movement it goes through, the higher the risk is”.
And although Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez told AFP that the Galerie Médicis was only “100 paces” away from the Salle des États, there are still risks.
People pose one big risk. This is why gallery workers try to arrange these moves for a time of day when there are fewer visitors. The Louvre, for example, chose to move Mona Lisa in the evening, after the museum had closed.
