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  • Let's play a game.

  • Think of a famous painting.

  • Guess what?

  • You just thought of me.

  • Today, I'm the world's most renowned work of art, but it wasn't always this way.

  • My story is full of surprises, and it all began in a studio in Florence.

  • Well, here's the master himself, Leonardo da Vinci.

  • He worked on me on and off for a few years towards the end of his career.

  • You're a minor work, my dear, some interesting shading, nothing more.

  • We'll just see about that.

  • Over the next 300 years, I hung quietly in French palaces and royal bathrooms.

  • The things I've seen.

  • Until finally I was noticed by a man who had already made quite a name for himself.

  • When Napoleon chose me to hang on his bedroom wall, people took notice.

  • I look forward to sleeping with you, ma chérie.

  • After he had his whole exile-from-France thing, they tossed me on a wall at the Louvre.

  • But at this point, I was still just another Renaissance portrait.

  • Until one night...

  • Bella...

  • I was stolen! It was pandemonium; Paris was in an uproar.

  • The police hauled people in left and right.

  • The hysteria hit a fever pitch when the police suspected and interrogated one of the most famous artists in the world, Pablo Picasso.

  • But Picasso was innocent.

  • The thief turned out to be an Italian carpenter.

  • He was caught in Florence.

  • Mama mia!

  • And I returned to the Louvre.

  • From that day forward, I became the darling of the art world.

  • Everyone wanted to see Napoleon's da Vinci painting Picasso was suspected of stealing.

  • Soon, tourists crowded in, and most people forgot why I was famous in the first place.

  • That might raise some eyebrows, but not mine, since I don't have any.

  • Oh, you didn't notice I don't have any eyebrows?

  • I told you, I'm full of surprises.

Let's play a game.

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