Italian Group Requests Return of Mona Lisa to Florence

.

Aurelie Filippetti says 'no'.

It is being reported that campaigners of the National Committee for Historical, Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Italy have collected over 150,000 signatures calling on the Louvre museum in Paris to hand over Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to Florence where its painting was begun. Committee President Silvano Vincenti said he has made a formal request to the French minister of culture, Aurelie Filippetti, for the painting to be given back.

Leonardo is thought to have begun work on the enigmatic portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy Tuscan silk merchant, in Florence in 1503. But art historians think he took it with him when he moved to France in 1516. The French Royal family then acquired it and following a spell at Versailles it ended up at the Louvre museum after the French Revolution. 

So, no real grounds for it "going back" it seems to me. Surely this is just a publicity stunt.

Source: Michael Day, 'Give us back the Mona Lisa: Italian campaigners demand France returns world's most famous painting to 'home city' of Florence', Daily Mail 7th Sept 2012.