Episode Details

In 1911 Pablo Picasso was hauled into a Paris police station and interrogated over a missing painting that was actually sitting in a false-bottomed trunk in a handyman's apartment. This episode tells the biography of that object: a 30-by-21-inch panel of poplar wood that began as a silk merchant's private commission in Florence around 1503 and mutated into the most recognizable face on Earth.

From Lisa del Giocondo and a 2005 margin note that settled her identity, through Leonardo's optical tricks, royal bedrooms, the theft that made her famous, and the medical-grade conservation that keeps her alive, the hosts follow the Mona Lisa across five centuries.

• Why Francesco del Giocondo commissioned the portrait, why Leonardo never delivered it, and what the name La Gioconda actually means
• Sfumato, the three-quarter pose, the raised horizon line, and how the smile appears and vanishes depending on where you look
• Pascal Cotte's 2007 scans showing the eyebrows and eyelashes were once there and later scrubbed away
• Vincenzo Peruggia, the broom closet, two years in a trunk, and how halftone newspaper printing turned a theft into global celebrity
• The WWII evacuation, a rock in 1956, red paint in Tokyo, a teacup in 2009, walnut butterfly braces, insect fumigation, and the climate-controlled case at 50 percent humidity