Paris (AFP)

Undoubtedly star of the Louvre, it attracts every day 30,000 admirers. The Mona Lisa will not be part of the exhibition dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci but, just a few steps away, it will reveal some of its secrets during an unprecedented virtual reality experience.

Opening Thursday, the exhibition-event plans to welcome 7,000 visitors per day, a figure well below that of visitors coming to admire the Mona Lisa, amidst traffic jams and selfie poles in the Salle des Etats of the museum.

To make up for this absence, the visitor can, at the end of the course, spend seven minutes "face-to-face with the Mona Lisa" (the name of the experience) thanks to an unprecedented partnership between the museum and the Taiwanese group HTC VIVE Arts.

"This is a painting that, by its success, is far from its audience, it's like the big stars," says one at the Louvre, delighted with this experience to "approach the Mona Lisa and understand the composition of the work ".

Once the helmet on the eyes, the visitor is found in the State Room where sits the table, among the crowd that dissipates, leaving him alone in front of this figure to the status of icon. The opportunity to get closer to Mona Lisa, to learn more about her life (wife of rich Florentine silk merchant), her hairstyle (she wears a cap and has two locks of loose hair framing her face) or her posture.

This "head-to-head" also allows to linger on the board as such, returning to the crack of the panel that usually only can see the eyes exercised, as well as the famous "sfumato" process technical giving a vaporous air to the famous painting, blurring its contours and details.

Not stingy in surprise, the experience finally proposes to "escape" to the land of the Mona Lisa and discover the landscapes that surround it in a nod to the scientific work of Leonardo da Vinci.

There are still some mysteries, like that smile that seems to tell everything and its opposite for centuries. "Is it a welcoming smile, disdainful of amorous or ironic connivance, to everyone's interpretation," says Vincent Delieuvin of the Louvre. "In my opinion, the interpretation reveals much more about the commentator than about the art of Leonardo".

© 2019 AFP