The Theft that Made Mona Lisa Famous
I’ve written about the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci before but what made this painting so famous? She is one of the most widely recognized pieces of art in the world today but this wasn’t always the case. Before 1911, Mona Lisa was only really popular in some artist circles. So, the question remains, how and why did she shoot to fame?
Mona Lisa
I’ve already written a bunch about this painting, remember the second and third Mona Lisas? So I won’t go into a ton of detail here because you probably already know. The overview is that Leonardo da Vinci painted this work between 1503 and 1506 but he may have continued to work on it until as late as 1517. It is the property of the French Republic and has been on display at the Louvre museum in Paris since 1797.
From the creation of the painting until the 1800s it was very unknown, some in the art world were familiar with the work but the average person would never have heard of it. By the 1860s some French intellectuals began to hail Mona Lisa as a masterwork of Renaissance painting. But still, that was a small group.
The Theft
By 1911, still, the average person likely had never heard of the Mona Lisa and where she hung in the Louvre she wasn’t even the most well-known painting in her gallery, let alone the whole museum. Because of this people didn’t even realize the painting was missing for about 28 hours. But let’s go back to the beginning of the story.
Early in the morning of Monday, August 21, 1911, a man walked out the front doors of the Louvre. This would have been odd in Paris at the time since Sunday was a big going out night and people would usually be hungover on Monday mornings (incredibly rough start to the week), therefore, not heading to the art museum too early. However, this man was not hungover. He may have been tired from spending all night in a supply closet but he was making a clean getaway.
The night before this mysterious man had hidden in the supply closet and very early on that morning had come out to lift 200lbs worth of painting, frame, and protective glass off the wall. This would have actually been pretty easy for him since he was actually the man who the Louvre had hired to install the protective glass in the first place. He easily removed the glass and the frame and hid the wooden canvas in his coat, it’s pretty small so transporting it wouldn’t be an issue. He then ran out the front door of the museum and headed to Quai d’Orsay station to catch the 7:47am express train out of the city.
The following day, Tuesday, August 22, a still life painter came to the Louvre wanting to paint one of the galleries. He set up his easel in Mona Lisa’s usual gallery and started looking around at all the paintings as he sets up. Then he noticed the four hooks on the bare patch of wall where the painting used to be. He wasn’t too worried because there was a project going on to photograph the museum’s works but since cameras in 1911 didn’t work well inside the paintings were being taken up to the roof to be shot. The artist asked a guard on duty when the photographers were going to be done with Mona Lisa because he “couldn’t work as long as [she] wasn’t there” (NPR, 2011). The guard went up to the roof to ask but he found out that, of course, the photographers didn’t have the painting. This FINALLY raised the alarm. The Louvre was closed down for an entire week following the theft and the French police started their investigation. However, the museum had to explain this closure at some point and ended up announcing that the painting had been stolen. Immediately this made headline news around the world and in Paris, the event had become a scandal. When the Louvre reopened swarms of people rushed in to see the bare spot on the wall that “had become a ‘mark of shame’ for Parisians” (NPR, 2011).
The Investigation
Back to the thief for a second, he had indeed made a great getaway. No one knew who he was and the police seemed to have no idea who could have stolen it, questioning people like Pablo Picasso and American tycoon and art lover J.P. Morgan, some even thought that the German Kaiser was behind the heist. So the thief must have felt pretty safe.
The problem was that all this press was seriously hurting his plans. He had stolen the Mona Lisa in order to sell it but it was quickly becoming internationally known and was too hot for the black market, too recognizable. What a rookie mistake, always have a buyer lined up beforehand. Within a few days, the newspapers started issuing rewards for the return of the painting or any information, the thief could have turned it in at this point but he was probably too scared of getting caught so instead it was stored in the false bottom of a trunk at his Paris boardinghouse.
There was really no progress in this investigation until twenty-eight months after the original theft (December 1913). The thief tried to sell the painting to an art dealer in Florence, I guess he was hoping that things had cooled off a little and people had forgotten about it, plus he had taken the painting outside of France and maybe he thought that would work in his favour as well. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The dealer was immediately suspicious and called the head of an Italian art gallery (none other than the Uffizi Gallery!) to come to take a look. A stamp on the back of Mona Lisa’s canvas confirmed the piece’s authenticity and the Florentine art dealer finally gave the police the thief’s name; Vincenzo Perugia. Perugia returned home after selling the painting to the art dealer, probably feeling relieved to have it off his hands, but half an hour later the police showed up to arrest him, sucks to suck.
Upon his arrest, Perugia tried to flip the story around saying that he was a hero for Italy and was only trying to return the painting to the country where it rightfully belonged. That it had been stolen from Italians by Napoleon and should have never been in France in the first place. No one really bought this including the Italian art professionals. Upon finding the painting safe and sound, the Mona Lisa was displayed at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence for a few weeks, before being carefully returned to the Louvre on January 4, 1914.
Perugia ended up standing trial where he pleaded guilty to stealing the painting and was only sentenced to eight months in prison. He also did end up getting what he claimed he wanted and was kind of saluted by some in Italy for his patriotism to his country of birth.
What’s interesting is that many art historians and writers believe that had another da Vinci painting (or any other painting in the museum for that matter) been stolen that night on August 21, 1911, it would be the most famous painting in the world and Mona Lisa would likely be largely still unknown outside artist circles. Funny how that works.
Works Cited
Antony, Scott. “When ‘Mona Lisa’ was Stolen in 1911, the Police Arrested and Questioned Pablo Picasso”. The Vintage News. 2017. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/12/15/mona-lisa-was-stolen-in-1911-2/
McKenzie, Sheena. “Mona Lisa: the Theft that Created a Legend”. CNN. 2013. https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/18/world/europe/mona-lisa-the-theft/index.html
NPR. “The Theft That Made the ‘Mona Lisa’ A Masterpiece”. NPR: All Things Considered. 2011. https://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made-the-mona-lisa-a-masterpiece