John F. Kennedy and Leonardo's Mona Lisa: Art as the Continuation of Politics

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Based on archival research, this article analyses the exhibition of Leonardo's Mona Lisa (Paris, Louvre) in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and in New York in 1962/63. The painting was loaned to the US at the height of the Cold War and has wide reaching political implications. "The tremendous sensation created by Mona Lisa's journey to the United States stemmed not only from the painting's fame, but also from officials' eagerness to invest the display of Western civilization's most famous painting with a particularly charged political meaning." Remarkable are also the involvement of Jacqueline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy in acquiring the loan, and the tense political situation shortly before and during the Washington exhibition, including the Cuban Missile Crisis.