History hopping: Justinian and Julia
From the 6th century Macedonia to modern Paris in a 7 minute read. How I teach history to my 12-year-old daughter.
555 A.D. Justinian and the monks
1500 years ago, silk was an incredibly high priced good. Only the Chinese knew the secret to its elaboration and they kept it very secure.
Justinian also knew that if he could find a way to make silk, he would become a very rich man. But the only communication between current northern Macedonia and China was by ground. With no other travel medium besides the horse. A very long journey indeed.
Justinian questioned a pair of monks from India who claimed to know the secret of sericulture. They promised the emperor they could acquire silk for him without having to procure it from the Persians, with whom the Byzantines were at war. When pressed, they, at last, shared the secret of how silk was made: worms spun it. And these worms fed primarily on the leaves of the mulberry tree. The worms themselves could not be transported away from India . . . but their eggs could be.
As unlikely as the monks’ explanation may have sound, Justinian was willing to take a chance. He sponsored them on a return trip to India with the objective of bringing back silkworm eggs. This they did by hiding the eggs in the hollow centers of their bamboo canes. The silkworms born from these eggs were the progenitors of all the silkworms used to produce silk in the west for the next 1,300 years.
Although the Byzantines had already procured silkworm eggs from China by this point, the quality of Chinese silk was still far greater than anything produced in the Western countries, and in the upcoming centuries, some smart businessmen made Justinian’s wealthy dreams a reality.
1475 A.D. Francesco del Giocondo. The silk road
Francesco del Giocondo, born in 1465, was only 24 years old when he was elected in 1489 as a Consul of the Silk Guild and it is clear that his ambition and business acumen were recognized at an early age.
He was not rich, but definitely wealthy enough to marry the woman he was in love with. Lisa Gherardini was only 15 years old when she was proposed marriage by Francesco. They truly loved each other and nothing could make them happier than spending their lives together.
She was so enchanting and Francesco so cherished her, that he decided he would make her a portrait, that was a symbol of wealth in those times, anyway. His auroserici sales provided him with some nice earnings, so he decided he would contact that famous painter whose studio was a couple of blocks away from his parents. So he asked about the location and name of that pittore.
Leonardo “il florentino”, was his man, they told him.
Leonardo da Vinci started working on the painting at around 1503. He was quite happy with the results. He invested some time in this picture as he was trying a new technique he had just learned. It will probably remain a mystery why he brought it with him to France when he started working for Francis I. But it was another of those historical hiccups that turned the course of history in an unexpected way.
1911 A.D. Vincenzo Peruggia. The rise of the Mona Lisa
It was early morning on that 21st August 1911. The dawn was setting up for another hot summer day in Paris and here and there the first models of the flourishing car industry were already being driven in the dusty streets by wealthy early-morning owners. But in those times, cities were mostly silent and Vincenzo knew the Louvre museum would be mostly empty. Only the workers assigned to the cleaning tasks would be entering the museum that day.
He was determined to return the portrait of Lisa Gherardini to its homeland and recoup for the affront made by Napoleon to his country when he plundered the painting in the 19th Century, or so he believed. He might not be aware that it was actually Leonardo himself who brought the painting to France. Or maybe he knew and did not care.
Dressed as many of the other museum employees, he walked straight to the Salon Carre. There it was. Lisa.
Witnesses reported that a tall stout individual had been carrying what appeared to be a large panel covered with a horse blanket, then caught the Paris to Bordeaux express at 7:47 am as it was pulling out of the Quai d’Orsay station.
The greatest art theft of the 20th had been executed. In the solitude of his apartment in Paris, Vincenzo looked at Lisa’s mesmerizing eyes in the portrait. He often wondered whether Lisa did have that intense look or it was Leonardo's virtuosity that wrapped an otherwise beautiful young lady with a veil of mystery. He would probably never know.
Actually, no one will ever know.
Peruggia had the privilege to be the only person in the work who could contemplate Lisa for two years. Not even Francesco had had that privilege. Finally, he returned to Florence. He wasn’t sure about the next steps, after all, he was a robber, not an art dealer. He decided the best way to proceed would be to find someone who knew more about art than him. There was this art gallery in Via Borgo Ognisanti. The owner, Alfredo Geri was known to be an expert in Italian art. Vincenzo decided he was the right man to talk to.
He sent a telegram offering the Mona Lisa for the promise that it would remain in the gallery of the Uffizi in Florence and 500.000 Italian liras, a fortune at the time. I guess he understood these were his honoraries for his service to the mother country.
Geri called in Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery, who authenticated the painting. Poggi and Geri, after taking the painting for “safekeeping”, informed the police, who arrested Peruggia at his hotel. After its recovery, the painting was exhibited all over Italy with banner headlines rejoicing its return and then returned to the Louvre in 1913.
While the painting was famous before the theft, the notoriety it received from the newspaper headlines and the large scale police investigation helped the artwork become one of the best known in the world.
2020 A.D. Julia visits the Louvre
In 2020 I went to Paris for the third time. Disneyland Paris is like a sinkhole for children.
On previous occasions, we had visited other Paris monuments. This time I decided we would do an introduction to the history of art. Not too long. After all, she is only 12.
“I will take you to the most famous picture in the world”. Musee du Louvre: we walked to the first floor, along the Denon alley and then, between the Italian paintings of 1250–1800 and the French paintings of 1780–1850, we found it. It was early in the morning and she could take a quiet look at it.
For a few seconds (children are not very patient beings) she looked at Lisa, then she turned to me and asked: “Dad, it looks like a very normal painting to me. Why is it so famous?”
I answered her:” well, in the year 555 there was this emperor….”
My daughter's name is Julia.
