Corinne Bouchoux

I fulfilled one of my most cherished dreams a couple of years ago when my husband and I finally(!) visited Paris. Naturally, one full day was spent at the Louvre, the jewel of France. While, believe it or not, the Mona Lisa was not at the top of our "must see" list, we did track it down. Did you know, by the way, that "Mona Lisa" is not really what the painting is called in Paris? It's actually called "La Joconde," which is not only her surname but also means "the dove."

Anyway, it wasn't hard to find. All you have to do is look for a huge number of people standing 25 feet from a fairly small painting (it's only about 16"x20"), trying to get a good photo over and around every other person's head.

Fortunately for us, I was touring the museum in a wheelchair. When one of the guards spotted us coming, he beckoned us over, unhitched the red velvet rope marking the painting's sanctum ... and let us approach her. We have pictures in case you don't believe me.

In any event, if it wasn't for a woman named Rose Malland and some other brave citizens of La Belle France, La Joconde would have have been hanging on that wall (she also wouldn't have been stolen a couple of times and vandalized at least once, either). She would have disappeared someplace in Germany and may have gone up in flames when Hitler decided he didn't want any major work of art to survive him. If he couldn't win the War, he was determined he would punish the world by murdering great art.

At the end of World War II, the French Resistance found itself in a different war. European art treasures were being stolen wholesale by every Nazi who could get his hands on something. The walls of the Louvre (and all the other great museums) had frames hanging on its walls, but there was nothing in them. However, some of those frames had not been emptied by the Germans but by the people who believed that their country had laid a singular trust in them -- save the art.

Rose Valland was one of the preeminent art historians of the period. And this book tells the absorbing story of how she saved Mona Lisa and other work so that, 70 years later, I would could take a picture of my husband with her painting behind him.… (més)