The full history of the Mona Lisa Robbery
On August 21, 1911, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in the world, was stolen right off the wall of the Louvre (famous museum in Paris, France). It was such an inconceivable crime, that the Mona Lisa wasn’t even noticed missing until the following day.
Everyone had been talking about the glass panes that museum officials at the Louvre had put in front of several of their most important paintings. Museum officials stated it was to help protect the paintings, especially because of recent acts of vandalism. The public and the press thought the glass was too reflective.
Louis Béroud, a painter, decided to join in the debate by painting a young French girl fixing her hair in the reflection from the pane of glass in front of the Mona Lisa.
On Tuesday, August 22, 1911, Béroud walked into the Louvre and went to the Salon Carré where the Mona Lisa had been on display for five years. But on the wall where the Mona Lisa used to hang, in between Correggio’s Mystical Marriage and Titian’s Allegory of Alfonso d’Avalos, sat only four iron pegs.
Béroud contacted the section head of the guards, who thought the painting must be at the photographers’. A few hours later, Béroud checked back with the section head. It was then discovered the Mona Lisa was not with the photographers. The section chief and other guards did a quick search of the museum — no Mona Lisa.
Since Théophile Homolle, the museum director, was on vacation, the curator of Egyptian antiquities was contacted. He, in turn, called the Paris police. About 60 investigators were sent over to the Louvre shortly after noon. They closed the museum and slowly let out the visitors. They then continued the search.
It was finally determined that it was true — the Mona Lisa had been stolen.
The Louvre was closed for an entire week to aid the investigation. When it was reopened, a line of people had come to solemnly stare at the empty space on the wall, where the Mona Lisa had once hung. An anonymous visitor left a bouquet of flowers.
“[Y]ou might as well pretend that one could steal the towers of the cathedral of Notre Dame,” stated Théophile Homolle, museum director of the Louvre, approximately a year before the theft. (He was forced to resign soon after the robbery.)
The Clues
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much evidence to go on. The most important discovery was found on the first day of the investigation. About an hour after the 60 investigators began searching the Louvre, they found the controversial plate of glass and Mona Lisa’s frame lying in a staircase. The frame, an ancient one donated by Countess de Béarn two years prior, had not been damaged. Investigators and others speculated that the thief grabbed the painting off the wall, entered the stairwell, removed the painting from its frame, then somehow left the museum unnoticed. But when did all this take place?
Investigators began to interview guards and workers to determine when the Mona Lisa went missing. One worker remembered having seen the painting around 7 o’clock on Monday morning (a day before it was discovered missing), but noticed it gone when he walked by the Salon Carré an hour later. He had assumed a museum official had moved it.
Further research discovered that the usual guard in the Salon Carré was home (one of his children had the measles) and his replacement admitted leaving his post for a few minutes around 8 o’clock to smoke a cigarette. All of this evidence pointed to the theft occurring somewhere between 7:00 and 8:30 on Monday morning.
But on Mondays, the Louvre was closed for cleaning. So, was this an inside job? Approximately 800 people had access to the Salon Carré on Monday morning. Wandering throughout the museum were museum officials, guards, workmen, cleaners and photographers. Interviews with these people brought out very little. One person thought they had seen a stranger hanging out, but he was unable to match the stranger’s face with photos at the police station.
The investigators brought in Alphonse Bertillon, a famous fingerprint expert. He found a thumbprint on the Mona Lisa’s frame, but he was unable to match it with any in his files.
There was a scaffold against one side of the museum that was there to aid the installation of an elevator. This could have given access to a would-be thief to the museum.
Besides believing that the thief had to have at least some internal knowledge of the museum, there really wasn’t much evidence. So, who dunnit?
Who Dunnit?
Rumors and theories about the identity and motive of the thief spread like wildfire. Some Frenchmen blamed the Germans, believing the theft a ploy to demoralize their country. Some Germans thought it was a ploy by the French to distract from international concerns. The prefect of the police had his own theory:
The thieves — I am inclined to think there were more than one — got away with it — all right. So far nothing is known of their identity and whereabouts. I am certain that the motive was not a political one, but maybe it is a case of ’sabotage,’ brought about by discontent among the Louvre employees. Possibly, on the other hand, the theft was committed by a maniac. A more serious possibility is that La Gioconda was stolen by some one [sic] who plans to make a monetary profit by blackmailing the Government [sic].
Other theories blamed a Louvre worker, who stole the painting in order to reveal how bad the Louvre was protecting these treasures. Still others believed the whole thing was done as a joke and that the painting would be returned anonymously shortly.
On September 7, 1911, 17 days after the theft, the French arrested Guillaume Apollinaire. Five days later, he was released. Though Apollinaire was a friend of Géry Piéret, someone who had been stealing artifacts right under the guards’ noses for quite a while, there was no evidence that he had any knowledge or had in any way participated in the theft of the Mona Lisa.
Though the public was restless and the investigators were searching, the Mona Lisa did not show up. Weeks went by. Months went by. Then years went by. The latest theory was the that the painting had been accidentally destroyed during a cleaning and the museum was using the idea of a theft as a cover-up.
Two years went by with no word about the real Mona Lisa. And then the thief made contact.
The Robber Makes Contact
In the Autumn of 1913, two years after the Mona Lisa was stolen, a well-known antique dealer, Alfredo Geri, innocently placed an ad in several Italian newspapers which stated that he was “a buyer at good prices of art objects of every sort.” 4
Soon after he placed the ad, Geri received a letter dated November 29 (1913), that stated the writer was in possession of the stolen Mona Lisa. The letter had a post office box in Paris as a return address and had been signed only as “Leonardo.”
Though Geri thought he was dealing with someone who had a copy rather than the real Mona Lisa, he contacted Commendatore Giovanni Poggi, museum director of the Uffizi (museum in Florence, Italy). Together, they decided that Geri would write a letter in return saying that he would need to see the painting before he could offer a price.
Another letter came almost immediately asking Geri to go to Paris to see the painting. Geri replied, stating that he could not go to Paris, but, instead, arranged for “Leonardo” to meet him in Milan on December 22.
On December 10, 1913, an Italian man with a mustache appeared at Geri’s sales office in Florence. After waiting for other customers to leave, the stranger told Geri that he was Leonardo Vincenzo and that he had the Mona Lisa back in his hotel room. Leonardo stated that he wanted a half million lire for the painting. Leonardo explained that he had stolen the painting in order to restore to Italy what had been stolen from it by Napoleon. Thus, Leonardo made the stipulation that the Mona Lisa was to be hung at the Uffizi and never given back to France.
With some quick, clear thinking, Geri agreed to the price but said the director of the Uffizi would want to see the painting before agreeing to hang it in the museum. Leonardo then suggested they meet in his hotel room the next day.
Upon his leaving, Geri contacted the police and the Uffizi.
The Return
The following day, Geri and Poggi (the museum director) appeared at Leonardo’s hotel room. Leonardo pulled out a wooden trunk. After opening the trunk, Leonardo pulled out a pair of underwear, some old shoes, and a shirt. Then Leonardo removed a false bottom — and there lay the Mona Lisa.
Geri and the museum director noticed and recognized the Louvre seal on the back of the painting. This was obviously the real Mona Lisa.
The museum director said that he would need to compare the painting with other works by Leonardo da Vinci. They then walked out with the painting.
Leonardo Vincenzo, whose real name was Vincenzo Peruggia, was arrested.
The story of the caper was actually much simpler than many had theorized. Vincenzo Peruggia, born in Italy, had worked in Paris at the Louvre in 1908. Still known by many of the guards, Peruggia had walked into the museum, noticed the Salon Carré empty, grabbed the Mona Lisa, went to the staircase, removed the painting from its frame, and walked out of the museum with the Mona Lisa under his painters smock.
Peruggia hadn’t had a plan to dispose of the painting; his only goal was to return it to Italy.
The public went wild at the news of finding the Mona Lisa. The painting was displayed throughout Italy before it was returned to France on December 30, 1913.
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