6
A CHAT WITH THE MONA LISA
On the weekend of December 8, White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger confirmed that Jacqueline Kennedy was indeed the impetus behind the historic exhibition. In a low-key briefing, Salinger told reporters that the First Lady had helped persuade the French to lend the Mona Lisa for exhibition in America. Salinger didn’t elaborate further, and the item was slipped into a collection of footnotes to the week’s news called “Post Scripts” printed in the Washington Post.
On Monday, December 10, a flurry of phone calls transpired between Mrs. Kennedy and John Walker, working out the details of the painting’s imminent departure. Walker first telephoned the White House shortly after 10:00 A.M., and he and Mrs. Kennedy spoke two more times later that afternoon.
Walker informed Mrs. Kennedy of new reports broadcast in the media that another committee of experts had warned the Ministry of Cultural Affairs not to allow the painting to leave France. But for the first time, Walker pointed out, the newspaper Le Figaro printed opinions of experts who supported the American exhibition, a promising sign that perhaps the tide had turned.
The next morning, Washington Post reporter Waverly Root, stationed in Paris, told readers that the question of whether the painting would stay or go was still undecided. His front-page dispatch appeared under the rather intriguing headline: “While First Lady Beckons, Sea Trip Risks May Keep Mona Lisa at Home.”
“The controversy about entrusting the world’s most famous painting to the chances of travel has put Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux on the spot,” he wrote. “It is understood here that he virtually promised Jacqueline Kennedy to send the Mona Lisa. But he now discovers that in authorizing shipment of the painting he may incur formidable responsibility. The question with which he must wrestle is whether it is more inadvisable to risk hurting the Mona Lisa or Mrs. Kennedy.”
As word spread about the Mona Lisa’s pending journey, the telephones at the National Gallery rang nonstop. Walker firmly referred all inquiries to French authorities. “All answers must come from the French Embassy,” he said. Jean-Claude Winckler, first counselor of the French Embassy in Washington, told reporters with a stern poker face, “the final word must come from Paris.”
On the freezing morning of December 12, 1962, President Kennedy convened his forty-fifth press conference with newsmen. The President wore a blue pinstripe suit and a “cheery look” as he strode to the microphone. Before the questions were to begin, the President had several important announcements to make. The most unexpected of these concerned the travels of the Mona Lisa: “On behalf of the American people, I wish to express my gratitude to the French government for its decision to lend the Mona Lisa of Leonardo da Vinci for exhibition in the United States. This incomparable masterpiece, the work of one of the greatest figures of the greatest western age of creativity, is to come to this country, as a reminder of the friendship that exists between France and the United States. It will come also as a reminder of the universal nature of art.”
He added that the painting would be exhibited at the National Gallery in Washington beginning January 8, with the special care that a great work of art merits. “Mrs. Kennedy and I particularly want to thank President Charles de Gaulle for his generous gesture in making possible this historic loan, and Mr. André Malraux, the distinguished French Minister of Cultural Affairs, for his good offices in the matter.”
According to Time magazine, the one hundred-plus reporters gathered inside the State Department Auditorium seemed uninterested in the announcement concerning the Mona Lisa, doodling on their notepads in boredom. Not a single question was asked of the President concerning the exhibition. The news was quickly buried by an avalanche of spirited queries concerning a “flap” over Adlai Stevenson and the Cuban missile crisis, nuclear propulsion into space, communications with the Kremlin, severe inflation in Brazil, and a nasty dispute involving the American Athletic Union.
The following morning, Walker telephoned the First Lady at 9:46 A.M. with additional updates concerning the preparations for the Mona Lisa’s departure. They spoke twice more that day, with the last call at 2:22 P.M. Walker gave her a detailed account as the plan unfolded. It was up to French officials to protect the painting from the moment it left the Louvre until it reached New York Harbor. Then, the responsibility would be handed to the Americans. The painting was scheduled to leave Paris in twenty-four hours.
The last museum visitor at the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa was a young Parisienne woman named Josette Venouil who arrived just before the Louvre closed. “I wanted to see it one last time,” she told reporters. “For me it is the most beautiful painting in the world.”
Shortly after dawn on Saturday, December 14, under heavy guard, the painting was gently lifted from the wall of the Grande Galerie. Her absence left a large vacant spot on the wall, and suddenly the giant portrait of King Francis I by the great Venetian painter Titian looked lonely. “For centuries his companion, hanging just to the right of him in the Louvre’s Grand Gallery, has been the Mona Lisa,” wrote Edward Folliard from Paris. “But this evening Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of the Florentine beauty has been crated and made ready for the trip to Washington.”
Dispatched by the Washington Post to Paris so as to cover Mona Lisa’s journey to America, over the next few weeks the normally serious political reporter would file some of the most amazing and fanciful copy to ever cross his editor’s desk. Edward Folliard and Washington Post colleague Waverly Root were both present as the Mona Lisa was inserted inside her special high-tech traveling case and placed in a large wooden crate. Museum workers dressed in matching overalls slowly loaded the box inside the back of a medium-sized steel fortified truck used by the Louvre to transport delicate objects. Inside the vehicle the crate was mounted on cushioned springs specifically designed to guard against vibrations that might shake bits of pigment from the picture’s surface.
Escorted by two police cars “running interference in the front” and another following closely behind, the truck departed the museum garage. A squadron of six motorcycle police formed a protective square around the convoy and accompanied the painting along its 160-mile journey to the Paris-Le Havre dock.
As soon as the box left the museum, Madame Hours telephoned John Walker at the National Gallery in Washington to give him the exact temperature and humidity levels at the Louvre at the moment of departure. Walker took note of the readings and handed them to Gallery engineers, who started adjustments to the Gallery’s ventilation system.
Officials at the Louvre and police escorts were unusually anxious that day because noxious icy fog—the worst seen in Paris in more than ten years—had descended on the city. The streets were slick and visibility was poor. Less than eighteen hours earlier along the icy Lille-Arras Parkway, a skid caused by one car had triggered a colossal accident in which 500 automobiles collided into one another. No deaths from the accident were reported, but the parkway was still closed as crews attempted to clean up the mangled mess of steel.
During the lengthy trip, Edward Folliard followed behind the convoy in a separate car with a driver hired by the Washington Post. The motorcade traveled along the Seine River, moving through the town of Vernon—where American soldiers had crossed the river in their march toward Paris in 1944. As the convoy traveled through scenic Mantes, Folliard snapped a few pictures with his Kodak camera. No one in the group, including the American journalist, was able to draw a deep breath and relax until the convoy safely reached its destination.
Under secret surveillance, the wooden crate housing the special metal box was reverentially loaded onto the ocean liner SS France, where it was then bolted to the floor of Cabin M-79 and covered with a thick dark gray wool blanket. Monsieur Jean Chatelain, Director of the French Museums, ensconced himself in the adjacent Cabin M-77. Maurice Serullaz, the chief curator of the Old Master Drawing Department, occupied Cabin M-81 on the opposite side of the narrow hallway. And reporter Edward Folliard occupied a less expensive lower-class cabin at M-120, quite a distance from the illustrious traveler, but “as near as he could get.”
As the Mona Lisa sat inside her cabin waiting to depart, Le Figaro tempered its campaign against the loan, and the newspaper “took its defeat philosophically,” noting President Kennedy’s news conference in which he thanked President de Gaulle for the historic loan and reminding readers that the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs had fully approved the journey. “Thus, the risk is being run in spite of the warnings of the top authorities on the conservation of art works,” noted the editors of Le Figaro. “May the Mona Lisa successfully brave all the perils!”
After six months of tedious negotiations between Washington and Paris, the Mona Lisa was at last aboard the SS France bound for America. Nine French guards, two officials from the Louvre, and American newsman Edward Folliard all accompanied her. At 3:15 P.M. on December 14, the regal SS France slowly departed Paris. After leaving Le Havre, she crossed the English Channel and stopped briefly at Southampton, where 120 additional passengers embarked.
Steaming west into the North Atlantic, the SS France finally set out for its five-day journey to America. Onboard were many prominent passengers, including a handful of political figures, musicians, and artists, as well as two American bishops. The ship’s roster listed prominent American business figures, including the president and director of the Ford Motor Company of France and the president of the Bissell Corporation. None of the passengers was aware when they booked passage that they would become part of history, traveling with the Mona Lisa during her first voyage to the New World. The Mona Lisa was dressed for the occasion, nestled in her custom strongbox.
In Washington at the National Gallery, Walker was informed that the Mona Lisa had left Paris and that newsman Edward Folliard was aboard the SS France. The men were already closely acquainted. The two had first met when Walker was a young curator and Folliard was covering the construction and opening of the National Gallery in a series of high-profile features written for the Washington Post.
Walker took a moment to write Folliard a short personal letter anticipating his own arrival in New York to greet the ship at Pier 88 and take custody of the Mona Lisa on behalf of President and Mrs. Kennedy:
I wanted to write you a note to tell you how much I know the American people will appreciate the visit to the National Gallery of Art of the Mona Lisa, which we owe to your question to Monsieur Malraux and to your interest in this project over many years.
I read in the paper this morning that you were to accompany this great masterpiece across the ocean, and by the time you have received this letter I shall probably have greeted you in New York. I did, however, want to write you a personal note in any case. With all best wishes for a happy Christmas.
The French superliner with its slender hull, gracious appointments, and sweeping enclosed decks made her an ideal temporary home. The 66,000-ton ship featured twenty-two elevators, eleven decks, and six dining rooms. Its wealthy passengers traveled in much the same luxurious style as the passengers of the Titanic, observing the formalities of the captain’s table and the elite camaraderie of the salons.
According to one account, when several passengers were refused entrance to an area of the first-class passageway and noticed unusual activity, their suspicions were aroused. When further reports of extensive security and strange military-like activity started circulating among the ship’s passengers, some feared that the ship was carrying a secret device—possibly nuclear—of the Cold War.
Against the express wishes of Mona Lisa’s French escorts, the ship’s captain was forced to reveal the truth: the passengers were not traveling with a secret Cold War weapon but with the illustrious Mona Lisa. Once the cat was out of the bag, the lady’s first visit to America was toasted by the ship’s captain, who broke out the fine wine and champagne. Apprehension quickly turned into celebration as passengers engaged in Mona Lisa costume parties and drinking games. The superliner’s butchers, pastry makers, and table cooks prepared delicacies of Roast Beef Leonardo, Salade Mona Lisa, and Parfait La Gioconda to celebrate the painting’s transatlantic travel. Passengers feasted under a fifty-two-foot, star-studded dome in the first-class dining room and danced until dawn, oblivious to the elaborate security precautions discreetly exercised amid-ship. One night, a mischievous passenger even managed to slip past the heavy security to place a pair of women’s shoes outside Mona Lisa’s well-guarded cabin.
With the masterpiece safely situated in her air-conditioned crate, Edward Folliard, who had been given the assignment to cover the ocean voyage, found himself a newspaper reporter with nothing to report. His editors at the
Post expected him to file a story daily as the ship steamed across the Atlantic Ocean, but Eddie could not see the picture and wracked his brain for ideas. He remembered the old song “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” which gave him the inspiration to write about a midnight rendezvous with his special French paramour. In his first dispatch, Folliard told a tale of sleepwalking inside Mona Lisa’s cabin, where he engaged in intimate conversation with the traveling ambassador. The reporter’s fantasy went something like this:
“Shall I call you Signora or Madame?” I asked her.
She gave me her smile, which so many have described as enigmatic, and replied: “In the beginning, when Leonardo da Vinci painted me in Florence, you would have addressed me as Signora. But, as you know, I have spent the last 446 years in France, therefore, I suppose you would address me as Madame. But why don’t you just call me Lisa?”
“Merci, Lisa. Now for some questions. What do you think about all this fuss in Paris? I mean the uproar started by Le Figaro about your leaving the Louvre for a three weeks’ visit to the National Gallery in Washington?”
“I think the trip is very exciting.”
“Yes, but one commentator in Paris had this to say—You don’t ask a beautiful woman to come to you—you go to see her.”
“Well, not everybody would agree that I am beautiful. Vallentin said that my face was a very commonplace one. But Vasari said that, at least as Leonardo painted me, I was very beautiful. What do you think?”
“Well, as we say in the States, I think you are a lot of woman.”
“Merci. To get back to the matter of this trip. Why shouldn’t I go? Over the years millions of Americans have come to see me. There was your Benjamin Franklin. He was a dear and they used to say that he had an eye for the girls.
“And then there was Thomas Jefferson. What a brilliant man, a genius. I am sure he and Leonardo would have got along well.
“And then besides the hordes of tourists who came to see me, there were your brave soldiers. They were first called Doughboys in the First World War and GIs in the second one.
“And so I say why should I not go to Washington now? It seems to be the polite thing to do. I owe the Americans a visit.”
I told her that I knew very little about art, that I was just a White House reporter who also wrote about politics.
Lisa said she ought to know something about art, having sat for Leonardo for three or four years and having met many of his artist friends, but that politics and foreign policy were out of her line.
“But,” Lisa said, “I do know that the United States and France are very good and very old friends. Is that not another reason why I should go to Washington?”
Here for the first time Lisa showed a trace of apprehension. Was it true, she asked, that Jacqueline Kennedy, Madame Alphand, Lady Ormsby-Gore and all the Kennedy girls, including Ethel Kennedy, wife of the Attorney General—was it true that they all were very fashionable?
“What will they think of my clothes?” she asked plaintively. “As you can see, they are not very distinguished and are very much out of style.”
“Oh,” I said, “I wouldn’t worry about that. You might even start a new vogue, a return to Florentine fashions of 450 years ago.”
Lisa found this hard to believe but her smile returned. I then went on to tell her about what would happen at the National Gallery on January 8. How President Kennedy would unveil her in the presence of Congress and other dignitaries.
I also told her that Mr. Kennedy had a genius for saying the right thing at the right time and that she could expect that he would make her feel at ease and leave no doubt about her good looks.
Lisa seemed pleased. “Voilà,” she said, rehearsing for her American visit.
The tender story of the reporter’s dreamy chat with the Mona Lisa was printed above the fold on the front page of the Washington Post and read by nearly everyone in Washington, including the White House staff and the President and First Lady. The only American journalist invited by French officials to travel with the painting, the hard-boiled newsman and self-described romantic covered the voyage with his daily encounters with the Mona Lisa, helping to build the sensation the exhibition would unleash. Copies of Folliard’s fanciful musings were found in the various White House files connected with the exhibition and had seemingly been widely distributed and enjoyed.
Folliard’s imaginary conversations with the Florentine beauty were sent by telegram from the ship’s pursor’s office and were then edited and printed in the Post. A delight to read, they were also of grave concern to the Secret Service for fear his reports might trigger the interest of criminals, art thieves, or terrorists. Folliard’s dreamy interludes and descriptive passages of the iconic masterpiece, they feared, might serve as the perfect temptation for the criminal mind.
During the week in which the Mona Lisa left Paris and was traveling across the Atlantic, John Walker telephoned the White House more than six times, apprising Jackie of the changing situation. As French officials kept a twenty-four-hour vigil over the great treasure, every conceivable detail was provided for her safety and comfort. Such noble precautions, however, couldn’t safeguard the Mona Lisa from the threats of Mother Nature. Only two days into her voyage, the eleven-deck luxury liner encountered rough seas as the ship entered an unexpected storm with fierce winds.
In Paris, the winds “whipped, whined and whistled through the streets of the Capital as it never does except when there is a [great] storm on the Atlantic,” wrote Waverly Root in the Post. “With the tempest which arose in the night over all Northern Europe, producing winds of 60 to 80 miles per hour in France, many minds turned to the ocean, where the liner France was carrying the world’s most famous painting towards the United States.”
As the storm intensified and the ship was hit by turbulent and choppy seas, dishes crashed to the deck and passengers were knocked to the ground. Many aboard ship stayed inside their cabins waiting for the worst to pass. Broken glasses and wine bottles were strewn about the floor.
On the evening of December 16, conditions worsened as the ship encountered gales of near hurricane force. Passengers lurched into each other’s arms as forty-five-foot waves and winds of sixty miles per hour struck her abaft and broadside. By daybreak, all of France learned of the threat and feared for the Mona Lisa’s safety.
For a brief period communication with the ship was lost. One headline summed up the peril facing the masterpiece: “PARIS FEARS FOR MONA LISA’S SAFETY IN STORM AT SEA.” Straps securing the painting’s crate were tightened, while woozy guards kept vigil outside the Mona Lisa’s cabin as the massive ship heaved from side to side.
It took Captain Georges Croiselle nearly six hours to maneuver the giant ship completely out of harm’s way. Apprehension in Washington was eased only after Radio Station Europe No. 1 managed to contact the ship and learned from Captain Croiselle that the France was now beyond the storm area, and the Mona Lisa was “perfectly secured.”
French officials alerted Walker that the crisis had passed. He in turn relayed the good news to the President and Jackie. The positive reports only added to the Christmas spirit in both Washington and Paris. As Walker busily prepared for the Mona Lisa’s imminent arrival, the longstanding traditions of the holiday season commenced.
In a nationally televised ceremony on December 17, President Kennedy lit the national Christmas Tree, a splendid seventy-two-foot cut blue spruce shipped from Colorado. The tree lacked the dancing lights of 1961, but was decorated with 5,000 multicolored bulbs and 4,000 ornaments. The U.S. Marine Band and the Tuskeegee Institute Choir from Alabama provided musical Christmas tidings. In his prepared speech, Kennedy expressed his hope for peace “after a year when the peace has been sorely tried.”
Jackie continued the tradition she had initiated the previous year of selecting a theme for the White House indoor Christmas tree. This year her children’s themed tree sported brightly wrapped packages, candy canes, gingerbread cookies, and straw ornaments.
For the official Christmas card, Jackie broke away from use of the presidential seal and instead selected an enchanting black-and-white photograph of herself with Caroline and her friends enjoying a sleigh ride on the white snow covering the south lawn. The photo had been taken the previous February when a heavy snow had fallen on Washington. Jackie had asked that a sleigh be brought to the White House along with Caroline’s pony, Macaroni. She then took the children on a sleigh ride across the White House lawn in a scene right out of Currier and Ives.
“Could there be a more convincing emblem of true friendship and mutual trust than the gracious loan of the Mona Lisa to the United States?” asked one correspondent. The loan of the masterpiece was a well-chosen gesture of amity, shrewdly maximized by President de Gaulle and Minister Malraux to promote French national pride.
Nor did Americans miss the political and diplomatic significance of the loan of the Mona Lisa. The Kennedy administration would utilize the exhibition as a tool to shape, influence, and manipulate public opinion. The exhibition of France’s revered cultural prize would be carefully engineered to amplify the domestic and international popularity of America’s engaging, articulate, and media-savvy president, and the timing coincided with the introduction of television into the political mix.
The spectacle of the Mona Lisa’s unveiling would be telecast to a huge American audience so as to make an indelible impression. Always attuned to the deep power of symbols, Jackie played a critical role in her husband’s understanding that the new media of television, as author David Halberstam observed, conflated theater with politics. Behind the scenes, Jackie was responsible for much of this coordinated activity, and her papers contain notes of instruction to White House aides, speech writers, and advisors for the Mona Lisa’s arrival and unveiling. She carefully planned media coverage of the museum exhibition through her close alliance with John Walker.
It was the first time an exhibition of art had been an official duty for the White House, and it was the first time that a painting would serve as the icon of the free world. “Never before had a work of art directly and expressly been lent to a president and his wife, never before had the organization of an exhibition ever been an official matter for the White House, never before and never again did a president of the United States personally inaugurate an art exhibition, much less give an inaugural speech for it,” wrote scholar Frank Zöllner.
“Nobody suspected back then, not even the President,” observed fashion designer and friend Oleg Cassini, “that Jackie was to become his best public relations tool.” The First Lady may not have been fully aware of all of the forces at play, but the record demonstrates that she was the principal catalyst in the enormous undertaking, all the while employing the full force of her influence to see that the plan succeeded. She knew exactly what she wanted, and through a smile, a handwritten note, a timely telephone call, or a memo of instruction, she achieved her objectives for the unprecedented exhibition.
When the loan of the Mona Lisa had been jeopardized by a lack of funding for the extensive security required to protect the painting, $50 million in private funds to finance the exhibition was secured. Letters written by August Heckscher and John Walker state that funding for the exhibition was provided through the generous donation of an anonymous private donor in addition to federal funds. Walker never made public the name of the mysterious benefactor, and it is not known if Walker himself knew the donor’s identity. Although records no longer exist fully documenting the source, enough evidence exists to surmise that the funds for the exhibition may have been provided by Paul Mellon, the only son of Andrew W. Mellon, who had made the National Gallery of Art his gift to America in 1941. Mrs. Kennedy’s close association with Paul Mellon’s wife, Bunny, may well have facilitated the extraordinary gesture. It was one of many unanswered questions connected with the Mona Lisa’s unlikely expedition.