The Mona Lisa, known in French as La Joconde, is one of the most famous paintings in the world. But do you know what happened to it on August 22, 1911?

There is an interesting story behind the statue of Balzac by the famous sculptor Rodin. He wasn't afraid to shock his audience. Find out why his decision to represent Balzac's genius caused quite a scandal.

Edgar Degas' Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer might look unassuming at first glance, but it's actually an innovative sculpture that caused quite a scandal.

Learn the history behind Odilon Redon's The Chariot of Apollo, in which the titular god doesn't even appear!

The Venus de Milo statue at the Louvre is famous for its missing arms. King Louis XVIII issued an order forbidding it from being restored.

With The Asparagus, Manet introduced a modern approach to still life by painting a single stalk of asparagus on a table instead of a whole bunch. The painting was also a bit of a joke gift for a patron who'd overpaid for a previous "bunch."

Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People raised eyebrows when it was first exhibited in 1831. It's still controversial in some places. Find out what irked so many people and why some countries have requested that certain parts of the painting be covered.

In his painting The Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David made Marat a symbol of French revolutionary martyrdom. The painting represents Marat dying in his bathtub after being stabbed by Charlotte Corday in 1793.

The Impressionist movement owes its name to Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise. But the term "impressionist" was originally a slur, coined by a journalist criticizing the movement.

Camille Claudel was Rodin's student and lover for many years. Her best known work is the sculpture L'Âge mûr (The Mature Age). Find out the controversy and tragedy surrounding Claudel and the making of her sculpture.

In this video you will discover what happened to the oldest known representation of a fish in the world. Although carved straight out of a rock, it wasn't entirely safe from unscrupulous hands.

Gustave Courbet's painting A Burial at Ornans drew a hostile reaction at the 1850 Paris Salon due to the painter's decision to depict ordinary mourners on a grand scale. Many thought that ordinary people were not worthy of such attention.

With his painting The Floor Scrapers, Gustave Caillebotte was one of the first visual artists to portray urban workers. Art critics deemed his subject matter as vulgar, while the writer Émile Zola reproached him for his "bourgeois exactitude."

Did you know that Van Gogh went through a Japanese phase? Find out how Japanese art greatly influenced his paintings.

Why did the Habsburg emperors commission Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo to paint amusing portraits of prominent lords, knowing they that they might be subjected to ridicule? Find out in this d'Art d'Art episode!

In this video, find out the significance of the mysterious tapestry La Dame à la licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn). The meaning behind this six-paneled medieval tapestry has eluded scholars for centuries. Let's see how medievalists have made "sense" of it!

Jean-Michel Basquiat became the star of the New York art world at just 21 years old. In his painting Slave Auction, Basquiat depicts slaves and slave traders through masks and skeletons.

Giorgio de Chirico, founder of the metaphysical art movement, was best known for his dreamlike, often disturbing paintings. He was a great source of inspiration to Cubists, Futurists, and Dadaists.

What is IKB? Although not a mathematical formula, it is a formula of sorts. The artist Yves Klein perfected this beautiful blue pigment for his monochrome painting IKB 3. The idea was to fully engage the viewer with the perfect color, and the formula for his blue pigment has remained a secret to this day.

Sophie Calle's "The Telephone" is a flower-shaped phone booth on Paris's Pont du Garigliano. The work contains a functioning phone, but there's a catch: you can't make calls on it, though you may receive one from Calle herself!

The Sainte-Chappelle on Paris's Île de la Cité is best known for its magnificent stained glass windows, which were designed primarily as an instructional tool to teach the illiterate about the Bible.

In his painting Le cheval blanc, Gauguin had a unique way of painting a white horse. Instead of painting it white as he was asked, he painted it green according to his artistic vision, which didn't earn him any accolades at the time...

Did you know that King Henry IV supposedly slept in a turtle shell cradle as a baby? In any case, the cradle was attributed to him and venerated as a relic until the Revolution. Find out what became of the "most famous turtle shell in France"!

In 1863, amateur archaeologist Charles Champoiseau discovered a statue on the Greek island of Samothrace. The statue, known as the Winged Victory of Samothrace, dates from around 300 BC and is considered one of the most famous Greek statues in the world.

The painting "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1," more commonly known as "Whistler's Mother," was the portrait that made Whistler famous. A tribute to his pious mother, the painting doesn't reflect in any way the character of the artist, who led a very dissipated life.

The painting-within-a-painting technique was first used in the fifteenth century by Jan Van Eyck. Later on, the Flemish painter Quentin Metsys used the same technique in his own work, The Moneylender and His Wife. Watch the video to see how it's done!

Find out how the Great Sphinx ended up in the Louvre Museum. Contrary to popular belief, it was not one of the spoils of the Napoleonic Wars.

The paintings La danse au Moulin Rouge and La danse mauresque by the Art Nouveau painter and illustrator Toulouse-Lautrec suffered an unusual fate. Watch this video to find out what happened to them.

Manet's The Fife Player was deemed controversial in its day because it depicted an ordinary person, which departed from the traditions of academic portraiture.

In this video you will discover one of the most famous sculpture in the world, "The Departure of the Volunteers," also known as "La Marseillaise," which adorns the front of Paris's Arc de Triomphe.

In this video, you will discover the unusual fate of the work Homogeneous Infiltration of a Grand Piano by the German artist Joseph Beuys. Works of art don't usually require restoration so soon after their creation, but this felt-covered grand piano did.

The futurist painter Luigi Russolo was one of the first artists to attempt to render pure movement on canvas, drawing inspiration from early motion photography.