Mona Lisa In Her New Home

The Mona Lisa gets a new gallery home of her own, and crowds throng to the Louvre. “The Mona Lisa is not so much “hung” on its special wall as set, like a jewel, within it. With its stylishly brushed sgraffito surroundings, at once bare and luxurious, and its solitary magnificence behind glass, it’s for all the world like a watch in Cartier’s window. You need to be in the right frame of mind, but you can, for the first time in my memory, get a decent acquaintance with the Mona Lisa. Intimacy, even. So it’s finally possible to ask yourself critically: is she worth it?”