Between 1503 and 1506, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. Since 1797, the Mona Lisa has been on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The painting is the property of the French Republic.
Back then, the Mona Lisa was unheard of by the general public. In the 1860s, some French critics began to regard it as a Renaissance masterpiece, but that evaluation stayed within the art world. The artwork didn’t skyrocket into fame until the 1900s, when it went missing for approximately 28 hours.
On the morning of August 21, 1911, three men rushed out of the Louvre. They appeared to be Italian handymen, and they had spent the night in a supply closet in the museum.
While the Louvre was still closed, they snuck out of the closet and lifted 200 pounds of painting, frame, and protective glass off the wall. One of the men had actually been hired by the Louvre to install the protective glass case.
They covered the wooden canvas with a blanket and headed to Quai d’Orsay station, where they hopped on a 7:47 a.m. express train out of the city. It took 28 hours for someone to notice that the Mona Lisa was gone.
On August 22, a still-life painter set up his easel to paint one of the galleries in the Louvre. That was when he noticed four empty hooks and a bare patch on the wall where the Mona Lisa had been.
At first, he wasn’t alarmed because there was a project going on to photograph the Louvre’s works. The pieces were being taken up to the roof to be photographed.
He persuaded a museum security guard to ask when the photographers would be done with the Mona Lisa. The guard found out that the photographers didn’t have the Mona Lisa at all.
Following the theft, the Louvre was closed down for a whole week. The museum announced that the painting had been stolen, and newspapers all over the world ran headlines about it.
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The event had become a scandal. When the Louvre reopened, crowds of people visited the museum to see the bare spot on the wall for themselves.
At the time, France was concerned that American millionaires were infringing upon the legacy of France, so suspicions were thrown their way.
Tensions were also escalating between France and Germany ahead of World War I. As a result, some people thought the Germans were behind the theft.
Meanwhile, the actual thieves had escaped, knowing that French investigators were not on their trail. They were two brothers, Vincenzo and Michele Lancelotti, and the ringleader, Vincenzo Perugia. He was the handyman who had worked for the Louvre.
Perugia had planned to sell the Mona Lisa, but it was receiving so much attention that he was unable to move the painting. Newspapers started offering rewards for the return of the painting or any information regarding the piece.
Perugia ended up stashing the Mona Lisa in the false bottom of a trunk in his Paris boardinghouse.
Perugia finally tried to sell the painting to an art dealer in Florence, 28 months after the initial theft. However, the dealer was suspicious and called the head of an Italian art gallery to take a look at it. A stamp on the back of the canvas confirmed that the painting was authentic.
By then, Perugia had returned home, but half an hour later, the police showed up at his door to arrest him. He claimed that he had been trying to return the painting to Italy, where it belonged, because it had been stolen by Napoleon and never should have been in France in the first place. Nobody really believed his heroic story.
The Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre, safe and sound. Perugia was sentenced to eight months in prison. A few days after his trial, World War I broke out, and everyone moved on to more pressing matters.
But the Mona Lisa was never forgotten and is still one of the most famous paintings today.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
