Mona Lisa
Today the "Mona Lisa" is considered the most famous painting in the world, but until the 20th century it was simply one among many highly regarded artworks.
Once part of King Francis I of France's collection, the "Mona Lisa" was among the first artworks to be exhibited in Louvre, which became a national museum after the French Revolution. From the 19th century Leonardo began to be revered as a genius and the painting's popularity grew from the mid-19th century when French intelligentsia developed a theme that it was mysterious and a representation of the femme fatale.
The Baedeker guide in 1878 called it "the most celebrated work of Leonardo in the Louvre", but the painting was known more by the intelligentsia than the general public.
The 1911 theft of the "Mona Lisa" and its subsequent return was reported worldwide, leading to a massive increase in public recognition of the painting. During the 20th century it was an object for mass reproduction, merchandising, lampooning and speculation, and was claimed to have been reproduced in "300 paintings and 2,000 advertisements". It has been said that the "Mona Lisa" was regarded as "just another Leonardo until early last century, when the scandal of the painting's theft from the Louvre and subsequent return kept a spotlight on it over several years."
Mona Lisa replicas and reinterpretations
At a 2009 festival in Sydney, Australia, a group of eight people spent three hours creating a "Mona Lisa" replica from 3,604 cups of coffee. The mosaic effect in this case was created by adding amounts of milk, or sometimes none, to cups of black coffee. The final product, measuring 20 by 13 feet, was dubbed the ""Mocha" Lisa."
Maurice "Toastman" Bennet, known for recreating masterpieces using toasted bread, parodied "Mona Lisa" in a toast mosaic. At a 2010 food-art festival in Hong Kong, Bennet "tiled" together approximately 6,000 slices of bread, using a blow-torch to achieve the desired "tone" on each piece of toast.