Mona Lisa

On the sociology of celebrity, recognition, and cultural ordering techniques

Abstract

Summary: Following the sociological thesis of art that art is art as a result of recognition by others, this study endeavors to sociologically reappraise the history of recognition of Leonardo da Vinci and Mona Lisa. In order to reconstruct the history of recognition and to answer the question of why the Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings globally, cultural techniques of ordering and sorting, the early sociology of social inequalities and social status by Talcott Parsons and William Lloyd Warner, and theories of celebrity as a symbolic recognition process are first presented. Finally, the second step of the study examines the historically different ways of recognition of Leonardo da Vinci and his Mona Lisa.