The Mona Lisa travelled to Japan and Moscow in 1974.
The French government loaned Leonardo da Vinci’s painting for an exhibition tour that year. It was displayed in Tokyo before continuing to Moscow, giving audiences outside Western Europe a rare opportunity to see the Louvre’s most famous portrait in person.
This journey followed an earlier, much-publicized American tour from December 1962 to March 1963. On that trip, the painting was shown in New York and Washington, D.C., where about 1.7 million people reportedly queued for a brief view. It travelled aboard the ocean liner SS France and was protected by a specially designed case.
The 1974 tour is sometimes confused with the 1963 American visit, or with the painting’s 1911 theft from the Louvre. The Tokyo exhibition also made headlines when a protester sprayed red paint at the protective glass; the portrait itself was unharmed. Today, the Mona Lisa is rarely lent because of its age, fragility, security requirements and enormous cultural importance.