To help visitors get past the throngs of selfie-snapping tourists, Paris's Louvre museum is fine-tuning a virtual reality tour with 3D views of the portrait that look beyond the crowds, the glass case and the layers of varnish from restorations
PARIS — Mona Lisa’s lingering smile remains the same, but she is getting a first-of-its-kind virtual makeover from the Louvre Museum, which has struggled this year with the popularity of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece and the throngs of selfie-snapping tourists.
With a blockbuster Leonardo exhibition fast approaching, the Louvre and its production partners are fine-tuning a virtual reality tour with three-dimensional views of the portrait that look beyond the jostling crowds, the shatterproof glass case and the layers of varnish from restorations and the fading green patina.
The real oil on wood “Mona Lisa” was returned last week to the skylit Salle des États, to coincide with the Oct. 24 opening of an exhibition marking the quincentennial of the death in 1519 of Leonardo, master of the Italian Renaissance. During the summer, while the Salle des États was being renovated, the portrait was moved to the Galerie Médicis, which resulted in severe overcrowding because of limited access. Disappointed tourists complained about fleeting glimpses and barriers that kept them about 15 feet from the 30-inch-tall painting.
The virtual reality tour will be a more intimate encounter. The VR tour, designed to remedy the problem of crowds and distance, will be housed in a small gallery room near the main Leonardo exhibition and apart from the “Mona Lisa.”
The gallery, equipped with 15 headset stations, will offer seven-minute virtual tours that begin in a familiar crush of visitors with mobile phones aloft. They lead through a gallery of paintings to the portrait of Mona Lisa, the wife of an Italian silk merchant.
“She is seated, and spectators will be facing her like a conversation, face to face,” said Dominique de Font-Réaulx, the Louvre’s director of mediation and cultural programming.
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