Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Timeline of fictional stories about the Mona Lisa

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit


Here below is a chronology of fictional and semi-fictional stories (including films, episodes in TV series, as well as literary works) that revolve, either wholly or partially, around the famous Mona Lisa, a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Renaissance in Florence. The years listed on the left refer to the year of release of these works of fiction.

Contents

1970s

  • 1975 - The Second Mrs. Giaconda, a novel by E. L. Konigsburg exploring how the portrait came to be painted.
  • 1979 - The episode "City of Death", from the long running TV series Doctor Who, centres around a scheme of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. The Mona Lisa featured again several times in subsequent Doctor Who stories that were released from year 2001 onwards.

    • 1980s

  • 1985 - The adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Final Problem in the television series Sherlock Holmes by Granada Television, also centres around a scheme involving the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. The scheme, however, is the creation of the screenwriters who dramatised the episode for TV, and is not in actual fact part of the original Conan Doyle story written in 1893.

    • 1990s

  • In the 1987 Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon the turtles visit Paris in the episodes "Tower of Power". and "Rust Never Sleeps". visiting the Louvre, seeing the Mona Lisa painting. What's important here is that the turtles were named after Renaissance artists, including Leonardo.

    • 2000s

  • 2003 - The Da Vinci Code, a novel by Dan Brown. The Mona Lisa is an integral part of the plot, and this is underlined by the fact that the Mona Lisa itself has been used to grace the cover of this best-selling novel.
  • 2006 - I, Mona Lisa, a historical novel by Jeanne Kalogridis about Lisa del Giocondo
  • 2008 - The Smile, a historical novel by Donna Jo Napoli about Lisa del Giocondo

    • References

    Timeline of fictional stories about the Mona Lisa Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA