Making the Mona Lisa Famous: The Story of the History's Greatest & Most Botched Art Heist August 21, 1911
Vincenzo Peruggia is a 30 year old aspiring artist who has recently emigrated from Florence, Italy, to Paris and found work as a handyman at the Louvre, the world’s most renowned art museum.
Peruggia has a checkered past. During his short time living as a member of Paris’ Bohemian art community in various boarding houses he has been arrested twice, once for assaulting a prostitute and one other time for having drawn a gun in the midst of a drunken brawl.But early on the morning of August 21, 1911 aspiring artist and petty criminal Vincenzo Peruggia will steal the Mona Lisa and pull off the greatest art heist in world history.
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| Vincenzo Peruggia Mugshot & Fingerprints 1913 |
At 7 a.m. on Monday morning August 21, he enters the Louvre via an employee entrance with a crowd of other workers. Peruggia is dressed in a large white smock that is part of the customary uniform worn by all maintenance workers of the museum at the time.
Peruggia lingers around the Salon Carre`, the exhibit room in which the Mona Lisa is hung, and waits for the room to empty. Once the Salon Carre is empty he needs only a minute (according to Perruggia’s own police interrogation) to lift the Mona Lisa off the four iron pegs on which it is hung and carry it to a nearby service stairwell.
Once hidden in the stairwell with the painting, Perrugia removes the canvas of the Mona Lisa from its wooden frame and protective glass, wraps the painting in his over-sized white smock, and exits through the same service door through which he entered the Louvre only hours before and heads out into broad daylight.
From there, Peruggia reports that he walked with the painting to the nearby metro station at the Quai d’Orsay and hopped a train to his boarding house where he kept the Mona Lisa hidden at the bottom of a large trunk in his bedroom.
This is Vincenzo Peruggia’s version of the theft of the Mona Lisa, the one he gave to authorities in 1913, a full 28 months after the painting had first been stolen, and after he had contacted a Florentine art gallery owner named Mario Fratelli in December 1913 under suspicious circumstances.
Soon after the theft of the Mona Lisa at the end of 1911 Vincenzo Peruggia had returned to his hometown of Florence, Italy, where apparently he kept the painting in his apartment for nearly two years.
It seems that Peruggia grew frustrated because he was unable to find a safe way in which he could sell the painting without being caught since the theft of the Mona Lisa had generated so much international attention.
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| Gendarmes stand guard after the Mona Lisa's return 1913 |
Finally, after holding onto the painting for nearly two years Peruggia contacted Fratelli and informed him that, “for a reward”, he wished to return the Mona Lisa to its“homeland”, and that he wanted Fratelli to display the painting at his art gallery in Florence.
Fratelli, knowing that the painting had been stolen, feigned interest and had the Mona Lisa, which was then still in Peruggia’s possession, authenticated by both himself and fellow art dealer Giovanni Poggi from the nearby Uffizi Art Gallery. Together, both Poggi and Fratelli were able to convince Peruggia to let them hold the famous painting for safekeeping. Once they had the painting secured Fratelli turned it over to the authorities and Peruggia was promptly arrested outside a hotel in Florence.
In Paris the police, who had been investigating the theft for over two years and had launched an international manhunt of their own, had pieced together their own version of the events of the night of August 21, 1911. Though Peruggia would claim that he acted alone in stealing the Mona Lisa there were some holes in his story.
For one thing, the painting encased in a heavy wooden frame and protective glass, weighted over 200 lbs., and would have been very difficult for one man to lift off of the four iron pegs which attached it to the wall in the Salon Carre’ at the Louvre. Also, the canvas of the Mona Lisa is 21 inches wide and 30 inches long, while Vincenzo Peruggia was only 63 inches tall, and anyone carrying such a large parcel wrapped in a white smock by himself through the streets of Paris on a Monday morning (at least according to the Paris Gendarmes) would surely have been noticed.
Parisian authorities theorized that Peruggia, along with two accomplices, Michele and Vincenzo Lancellotti two fellow Italian emigres who also worked at the Louvre at the time, had hidden in a supply closet at the Louvre overnight on Sunday August 20, 1911 and waited for the museum to close before the three men together had made off with the famed painting.
However, there was never any evidence to implicate either of the Lancellotti brothers in the theft of the Mona Lisa, other than the fact that both brothers were Italian, had criminal records and were acquaintances of Peruggia at the time, and though it is possible, even plausible that Peruggia may have had accomplices in the heist there never has been anything more than circumstantial evidence that has come to light to dispute his confession, and the theory of the Paris police, despite having some plausibility in it, smacks of latent anti-Italian prejudice.
Peruggia would later testify to the court that he felt a great deal of resentment towards his fellow employees at the Louvre who belittled him and called him, "a macaroni" due to his Italian ethnicity.
In 1911, prior to Peruggia’s theft of the painting, the Mona Lisa, though famous within the art world itself, was little known to the general public at the time.
Painted by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1507 the portrait of a 16th century Florentine noblewoman with an enigmatic smile only first caught the attention of art critics in the 1860’s when the Mona Lisa started to be hailed as a representative masterpieces of Renaissance Era portraiture. Though the painting had been gifted to King Francis I in the 16th century and had been on display at the Louvre for many years, prior to Peruggia’s theft in 1911, few outside scholarly artistic circles were well acquainted with the painting.
Even Peruggia himself believed, in his own words, that, “the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Italy by Napoleon,” and despite being somewhat learned in Italian Renaissance art history even he had no idea of the painting’s true origins or history.
In fact, it took French authorities over an entire day to even notice that the Mona Lisa was missing.
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| Visiting artist reproducing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre |
At the time of the theft in August of 1911 visiting photographers had been tasked with photographing and cataloging all of the works inside the Louvre for record keeping and posterity.
On the morning of Tuesday August 22, 1911, a full day after Peruggia had made off with the painting, an amateur artist wishing to make a copy of the Mona Lisa stopped by the Salon Carre` intent on reproducing Da Vinci’s work.
The visiting artist assumes that one of the photographers has taken the painting outside since cameras of the time work much better in natural light than indoors and he waits around for the painting to return, but after several hours of waiting, he stops a security guard and inquires, “When will the photographers be returning with the Mona Lisa?”
Not having noticed that the painting was gone, the security guard replies that, “The photographers are up on the roof,” but he agrees to go up and inquire as to when they will be finished.
A few moments later the security guard, this time looking pale and noticeably shaken, returns and says, “The photographers say they don’t have it!”
News of the theft breaks around the world that week like a firestorm and the Mona Lisa becomes the world’s most famous painting overnight!
The headline in the New York Times on August 23, 1911 reads: 60 PARIS DETECTIVES SEEK STOLEN MONA LISA!
The Louvre is shut down to all visitors for an entire week. George Benedite, curator of the Louvre in 1911 tells the press that he believes, “Only a practical joker would steal such a prized painting,” because he is certain such an artwork is too difficult to sell.
The Paris Gendarmes assure the public that a thief is certain to come forward within the next forty-eight hours to demand a ransom and all 257 Louvre employees, including Vincenzo Peruggia, who correctly claimed he hadn’t been scheduled to work that day. are interviewed regarding the crime but the authorities can generate no solid leads.
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| Poet Guillaume Apollinaire |
With nowhere else to turn the police bring in famed poet Guillaume Apollinaire for questioning on September 7, 1911 after it is discovered that Apollinaire, an avid art collector, unknowingly possessed two ancient Egyptian statuettes which had once been part of the Louvre’s collection.
Apollinaire, who did have some connections to shady underworld art dealers including his own literary agent, becomes terrified under police interrogation and implicates his acquaintance Pablo Picasso as a possible suspect in the theft of the Mona Lisa. These accusations against Picasso are taken seriously by French authorities, but when it is discovered that Picasso has been in Spain for the entire year, all suspicions against him are dropped.
With leads running out, conspiracy theories about the theft of the Mona Lisa swirl around the world. Some believe that, with relations between France and Germany deteriorating prior to the onset of the First World War, that the Kaiser and German espionage agents are behind the art heist. Others in France, resentful at the recent influx of American money into the high stakes world of art collecting, accuse American millionaires, most notably J.P. Morgan of having stolen the Mona Lisa to add to their own private collections.
When the Louvre reopens, it reopens with an empty spot on the wall in the Salon Carre` where the Mona Lisa should have been. With French authorities unable to bring anyone to justice despite offering a reward of 40,000 Francs for any information leading to the arrest of any suspects in the theft of the Mona Lisa, that empty spot on the wall in the Louvre is soon dubbed France’s “Mark of Shame”.
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| "The Mark of Shame" |
Thousands flock to the Louvre each day to see the infamous “Mark of Shame” on the wall of the Salon Carre` and to speculate on where the Mona Lisa might be and who might have taken it.
“The Mark of Shame” and the coverage surrounding the story makes the Mona Lisa the most talked about painting in the world. The story receives so much coverage that Peruggia truly has no choice but to keep the painting locked away at the bottom of a wooden trunk in his small apartment in Florence for two years.
When Vincenzo Peruggia is finally arrested on December 13, 1913 it is a day of great rejoicing throughout Europe and the world. France will finally be able to erase its “Mark of Shame”.
Surprisingly, despite the notoriety of his crime, and the shame it has brought upon French law enforcement, Vincenzo Peruggia receives only 15 days in jail for stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in broad daylight.
It appears that the court did believe Peruggia’s testimony when he said that he had stolen the painting solely for patriotic reasons and wished only to return Da Vinci’s masterpiece to its rightful Italian home, this despite the fact that on December 22, 1911 while still in Paris, Perruggia had written a letter to his father stating that, “Paris is where I will make my fortune in one shot”.
Vincenzo Peruggia, though he wouldn’t spend much time behind bars, never would go on to make a fortune though either. He would serve four rather distinguished years in the Italian army during World War One and all who knew Vincenzo Peruggia would later claim that he was definitely a committed Italian patriot. Apparently though, Peruggia must also have loved France, because he would return to France, this time married and with a young daughter, after the First World War and live under the name Pietro Peruggia while working as a house painter until his death at the age of 44 in 1925.
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