French justice is examining Thursday the unusual request from an association demanding the restitution of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece exhibited at the Louvre, which has little chance of succeeding.
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Solicited by International Restitutions, a mysterious association whose headquarters and who their leaders are is unknown, the Council of State, the highest French administrative court, is called upon to “declare non-existent” the decision of King Francis I “to “appropriate” the portrait of Mona Lisa.
The association, which presents itself to the Council of State without a lawyer, requests that all acts “taken on the basis of the contested decision” be declared “non-existent”.
International Restitutions, which claims to act “on behalf of the descendants of the painter’s heirs”, wishes, in the event of victory, that this Renaissance masterpiece be “removed” from the inventory of the Louvre museum.
If International Restitutions’ request were accepted, should the Mona Lisa, which has sometimes been a subject of tension between France and Italy, be removed from the Louvre? Certainly not immediately. Similar requests from the association, for works less emblematic than the Mona Lisa, were never successful.
Thus, in October 2022, the association which had requested the removal from the inventory of the Louvre Museum of “objects originating from shipments made following excavations carried out by the archaeological service of the Army of the Orient between 1915 and 1923″, had finally withdrawn.
In November 2022, International Restitutions asked to declare “non-existent the registration in the inventory of the Chinese museum of the Château de Fontainebleau of all the objects resulting from the sacking of the Summer Palace in Beijing” by French troops in 1860.
This request was rejected by the Council of State.
In its decision, set to set a precedent, the Council of State declared that the association did not have “the standing to act”. “Only people who consider themselves to be the legitimate owners with an interest, where applicable, in the restitution of these goods”, were legitimate to submit a request, the court ruled.
Having fallen out of favor with the Medici, Leonardo da Vinci came to place himself under the protection of Francis I during the winter of 1516.
In his luggage, he had taken some of his paintings including the Mona Lisa (painted between 1503 and 1506). He had offered his works to the French sovereign who in exchange paid him a generous pension.
These works, which entered the royal collections, never left France again. The Mona Lisa has been at the Louvre since 1797… and is expected to stay there for a long time to come.
