The Missing Piece: Mona Lisa, Her Thief, the True Story

The Mona Lisa Myth

The Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, is a work by Leonardo Da Vinci and one of the most famous paintings in the world. It is currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris and is visited by millions of people every year. The Gioconda has not only gone down in art history for its artistic value, but also for the mystery surrounding its creation. Painted between 1503 and 1519, Da Vinci's last great work was revolutionary for the painting techniques used. After several analyses of the painting, it is known that the artist first made the drawing and then applied the oil paint. Da Vinci was the inventor of the 'sfumato' or blurring technique, which consists of blurring the outline of the drawing and softening the colors to create a play of shadows that gives the figure a three-dimensional effect.

"This installation or performance work puts my own earlier film of the Mona Lisa (1973) through another stage of transformation – my own irretrievable self of some 34 years ago is now also part of the subject I first saw the ‘actual’ ‘Mona Lisa’ when I was about thirteen. Of course I had seen dozens of reproductions in books and postcards by then and the popular mythology of the enigmatic smile was already well engrained in my mind. My strongest impression, as I recall, was how small and unsurprising it was – a heavily protected cultural icon – no longer really a picture – and I was much more excited by the painting of the distant landscape than by the face. My own ‘version’ of ‘la Giaconda’ was never an homage, nor like Marcel Duchamp’s ‘L.H.O.O.Q’, an attack on its cultural power. Instead it came from a fascination with change and transformation – maybe also with arbitrary appropriation." Malcolm Le Grice

The Mona Lisa by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci is the most famous painting in the world. What is the secret behind the "real" Mona Lisa? It draws legions of visitors to the Louvre in Paris to contemplate her enigmatic expression. In this "detective story," historians tell us how Leonardo developed the painting and uncover the long-hidden identity of the smiling woman.

This landmark film uses new evidence to investigate the truth behind Mona Lisa's identity and where she lived. It decodes centuries-old documents and uses state-of-the-art technology that could unlock the long-hidden truths of history's most iconic work of art.

The world’s museums are closed. What are you missing?  Take a real-time walk through the Louvre towards the “greatest painting ever” and contemplate what it would be like to be there yourself.

People looking at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre – or are they just looking at themselves?

In this adaptation of the popular eponymous mystery novel by Keisuke Matsuoka, Paris provides the gorgeous backdrop for a grand intrigue involving the world’s most iconic artistic treasure: the Mona Lisa. Minds will be blown, puzzles will be solved, but will a 500-year-old curse be removed?

A murder in Paris’ Louvre Museum and cryptic clues in some of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous paintings lead to the discovery of a religious mystery. For 2,000 years a secret society closely guards information that — should it come to light — could rock the very foundations of Christianity.

World-famous detective Benoit Blanc heads to Greece to peel back the layers of a mystery surrounding a tech billionaire and his eclectic crew of friends.

Paris, 1911. When Da Vinci's painting “La Gioconda” is stolen from the Louvre museum, it is suspected that the authors of the audacious theft are members of a group of bohemian artists led by painter Pablo Ruiz Picasso and poet Guillaume Apollinaire…

Une Bouffée D'air

Mary Turner gets a three year prison sentence for a crime she didn't commit. Once released, she plots to get back at the man responsible for her conviction.

L'Idiot follows Rajat "Rinku" Chaddha, an awkward, daydreaming young man obsessed with French culture, as he attempts to win over Mona, a charismatic girl in his French class. With the help of a local thief, Rinku devises a plan to become Mona's hero, but things take an unexpected turn, forcing him to confront his fantasies and reality.

This is the only feature directed by the famed French painter and sculptor Martial Raysse. In keeping with the revolutionary spirit of the time, the movie has no plot to speak of and appears to have been largely made up on the spot. We follow the cat man into a bizarre fantasy universe presented in negative exposure that reverses color values (black is white and vice versa) and written words. The cat man steals a car and then picks up a young girl he promises to take to “Heaven.” Heaven turns out to be a country chateau inhabited by several more animal mask wearing weirdoes...

A London curator loses the Mona Lisa to a collector, who discovers it's a fake.

An animated adventure through time and space.

Melissa is a young girl searching for love. In an overly sexualized world, her attempts are doomed to failure. She tries to imitate adults, but does not understand what she really desires. Thus, she experiences the pleasure and pain of eroticism in her mother's hair salon.

In a battery of photographs created with the use of mirrors, distorting lenses of his own manufacture and easel tricks, Weegee transformed the Mona Lisa into a work of modern art.

Feature-length documentary on the making of A GUN FOR JENNIFER.