Artwork or Artist? What Brings Value to Art in the 21st Century
- Riccardo Bortolan
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
Millions of visitors per year, some of the most important pieces of art in history, until one day, something disappears. And just like that, the Musée du Louvre becomes the scene of a robbery. The loot? Well, if until a couple of months ago the only possible answer was the Mona Lisa, by Leonardo Da Vinci, on October 19 2025 everything changed. Eight pieces of jewelry were in fact stolen in broad daylight. At the moment, the value of the heist runs around 88 million euros, but the loss is simply priceless… or is it? What determines the price of art today? Is it the artist? Is it the work of art itself? Is there something else? Today we will use the Louvre heists as an example to learn how easily the worth of art can fluctuate.
The theft of the Mona Lisa
Painted by Leonardo da Vinci between 1503 and 1506, La Gioconda has been in France since at least the 17th century, if not earlier, and has been part of the permanent collection of the Louvre since 1797. It was surely an important piece of art history back then, but we have to wait until the 20th century for it to reach its current fame. In fact, it is only after its theft in 1911 that this painting became popular worldwide. How come? Art thefts were relatively common at the time, but since it was the first time that a painting was stolen from a museum of such prestige, the news of its disappearance quickly spread internationally through newspapers. Just like today, mass media was a driver of public opinion, giving visibility to specific people, objects or events. And it is thanks to these mass media that the Mona Lisa increased not only in popularity but also in value, which today is estimated to be between 1.8 and 4.4 billion Euros.
The Louvre’s jewels heist
How is the theft of such a painting connected to the recent jewels’ heist from the Louvre? The answer here is shockingly easy: both heists have been the subject of a massive media-driven wave that gave them international recognition overnight. In fact, before the theft occurred this October, there was no special interest in those pieces of jewelry. However, within less than a week, as the news traveled around the world through news broadcasts and social media, we all became able to put an image to the stolen artifacts. Consequently, as the loot grew in popularity, so did its value. This brings up another interesting question. We have already heard the debate of whether the value of art resides in the artist who created it or in the piece of art itself. In light of the recent heist, could there be a different answer?
The role of social media as an accelerator of popularity growth
Nowadays, social media represents a motor that makes life more rapid. With the lowering of previous geographical barriers in communication, news has been traveling faster than ever before. If in the late 2010s, Instagram birthed the figure of “the influencer”, which became progressively idealized by users, in the early 2020s, TikTok changed the definition of this character. Because of the algorithm used to run this platform, with a bit of luck, anyone could have the chance to become famous overnight. All you need is one viral video. This is what happened to the stolen jewels: in 24 hours, everyone knew about their disappearance all over the world. Even if there is no trace of them, this jewelry is now more valuable than it was two months ago. This does not depend on either the quality of the craftsmanship or the notoriety of the artist, but rather on the virality that such an event earned through social media. As a community of users, having the opportunity to contribute on the virality of a subject can be empowering, but on the other hand, it should make us reflect on what we consider valuable and why. We all value art differently, but we should pay attention to the criteria we choose to establish value. Arguably, Art is supposed to be priceless because it is a witness of a certain time period, not because of news that “goes” viral.
Conclusion
What the Mona Lisa’s theft has taught us is that even in a society prior to globalization, media and communication play a central role in increasing the value of a work of art. This phenomenon can be seen even more clearly in the more recent Louvre heist of jewelry: social media skyrocketed the popularity of artifacts that, compared to more famous objects, were previously invisible. This makes the value of art related not only just to the artist or the quality of the artwork itself anymore, but adds one more factor: the media. This makes art’s worth harder to calculate, due to fluctuations in the influence of virality as a determining factor of its value. At the end of the day, the worth of art, or anything really, is determined by nothing but the value that us humans decide to give to it.