Dario Vitale’s initial encounter with the world’s most famous painting came when he was about 10 years old. It was on a trip to Paris with his parents, keen to cultivate their young son’s precocious cultural instincts with visits “to as many museums as possible,” he chuckles, harking back to the moment he laid eyes on the Mona Lisa for the very first time. OK, “laid eyes” is a stretch—he couldn’t actually see it. The baying scrum around the Renaissance masterpiece—and his height at the time—precluded a glimpse of her crook of a smile. Still, that didn’t dull the impression left on a young Vitale. “At the end of the day, I still left the room thinking I’d seen her,” he says, wistfully. “It was almost more about the idea of being in her presence than actually seeing her.”

A sweet anecdote

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