Stealing the Mona Lisa
Up until the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre Museum in 1911, the painting hung in relative obscurity in a backwater wing of the museum. Long known for shoddy security, it took Louvre staffers two days to discover that the painting was even missing, setting off a media sensation that twittered the French public and baffled the French police.
Who was Suspected of Stealing Mona Lisa in 1911?
Initially thought to be the work of modernist enemies against traditional art, avant-garde poet and playwright Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested and questioned for a week before being released.
Pablo Picasso was next on the suspect list, but without any solid evidence, he too was set free. The now-famous painting remained missing for the next two years, until petty thief Vincenzo Perugia made contact with Florentine art dealer Alfredo Geri, offering to repatriate the painting to Italy for a reward of 500,000 lire.
Calling himself Leonardo Vincenzo, Perugia traveled to Florence by train the following month, concealing the Mona Lisa in the false bottom of a trunk. Geri notified police when the painting was in his possession, and when Perugia was arrested, he insisted that he believed that Napoleon had stolen Mona Lisa during the Napoleonic War, and Perugia was just doing his patriotic duty by returning Da Vinci’s masterwork to its rightful homeland.
Why is the Mona Lisa Famous?
After his capture and confession, authorities would learn that Perugia, a former handyman at the Louvre, had donned a white frock worn by Louvre employees, entering the museum through an employee entrance on Monday, August 21st at 7:00 in the morning, walking into the still deserted Salon Carre and taking the painting into a service stairwell where he removed the Mona Lisa’s protective case and frame.
Wrapping the painting in his smock, he tucked it under his arm and walked out of the museum through the same employee service entrance in which he had entered.
Perugia would serve eight months in prison before being released in the end, the two-year buzz that surrounded the stolen painting solidified Mona Lisa’s reputation as an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, making her the best known and most visited and written about painting in the world.
Today, Mona Lisa attracts over ten million visitors each and every year.