“Give us the Mona Lisa”. So read one of the cult banners that made the rounds of sites and televisions immediately after the victory of the World Cup, on July 9, 2006. More than six years after that (sporting) humiliation inflicted on the French cousins, history could repeat itself, and this vengeance could take place directly in the button room of the Louvre Museum in Paris, where the work-symbol of Italian art is kept, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.
Let it be clear, the Mona Lisa will not be returning home, but according to what she reports Le Figaro soon a foreign director, and therefore why not also an Italian one, could take over one of the most prestigious museums in the world (certainly the most visited) and have "hands" on the masterpiece that has been disputed for centuries between the two countries. The current director, Henri Loyrette, is expiring of his mandate, and for the next three years - so long will the office last - it is not excluded that his successor will be above all a technician (and not a bureaucrat, as was the 62-year-old native of Neuilly ) and perhaps even a foreigner, as even Bloomberg wrote, testifying that the case is of considerable interest to the international press as well.
In fact, the Louvre is not just any museum: in 2012 it hosted 10 million visitors and has a budget of 200 million euros, worthy of a major global company. That's why the issue is delicate and, despite the hypothesis is taking shape, it seems difficult to believe that a nationalist people like the French, jealous of their success, could realistically decide to entrust such a center of money and power to a foreign personality. The Ministry of Culture, in doubt, has released the hot potato to a committee of wise men, who will settle the matter. However, it must be said, there are precedents: the National Museum of Modern Art, at the Center Pompidou, is for example directed by the German Werner Spies. And if instead the Louvre, the museum of the disputed Gioconda, ended up in the hands of an Italian?
