Here's something that might surprise you: before 1911, the Mona Lisa was not a household name.
It was painted by Leonardo da Vinci between 1503–1519. It was revered and known among artists, critics, and educated Europeans as an important Leonardo work, but it had never entered the world of a global pop culture icon. If you walked into the Louvre in the early 1900s, you wouldn't have found crowds gathered around it as they do now.
