A Quiz: The Mona Lisa Edition

Of the following four statements about Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, which is untrue:

• In October 1968, Aristotle Onassis attempted to purchase the painting as a wedding present for his fiancée, Jacqueline Kennedy.
• The French once loaned this priceless treasure to the United States for display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
• Pablo Picasso was arrested in connection with stealing it in 1911.
• Hedda Hopper portrayed the woman on whom the portrait was based in a 1926 Hollywood film.

The answer is after the JUMP.

Aristotle Onassis never attempted to purchase the painting, but there was a connection between it and his bride, Jacqueline Kennedy. During her tenure as first lady, she so charmed the French that they loaned the painting to the United States.

The Mona Lisa in 1913, After It Was Recovered in Florence, Italy

The Mona Lisa on Display in the United States

​Pablo Picasso was indeed arrested for stealing the Mona Lisa in the summer of 1911. In those days, security was lax at the Louvre. The painting had been missing from the wall for an entire day before the guards noticed it had been stolen. Clues remained scarce until a kleptomaniac came forward, confessing to having stolen minor Iberian artworks from the Louvre that he resold them to an unknown artist—Pablo Picasso. Picasso was tried but acquitted for the crime. However, he remained under a cloud of suspicion for two years until the painting was discovered in Florence, Italy.
 
Hedda Hopper did in fact portray Mona Lisa in a 1926 silent film that, but for a tiny fragment, is now lost. The powerful Hollywood gossip columnist first came to Hollywood to act, but her performances lacked the sparkle of her reporting. Even in those early days, she was too much of a harridan to convincingly play an ingenue, and the only such part ever offered her was Mona Lisa.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons and the John F. Kennedy Library