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Jun 15, 2011 · One hundred years ago, a heist by a worker at the Louvre secured Leonardo’s painting as an art world icon. James Zug. June 15, 2011. After 28 months, Vincenzo Perugia was arrested for the...
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- James Zug
Oct 20, 2019 · October 20, 2019 at 7:00 a.m. EDT. Visitors take pictures in front of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in Paris. (Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images) The heist happened in broad daylight. On...
Jul 30, 2011 · The right eye of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa." On Aug. 21, 1911, the then-little-known painting was stolen from the wall of the Louvre in Paris. And a legend was born.
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The theft of the Mona Lisa has been called the art heist of the century, but the caper itself was fairly rudimentary. On the evening of Sunday, August 20, 1911, a small, mustachioed man entered the Louvre museum in Paris and made his way to the Salon Carré, where the Da Vinci painting was housed alongside several other masterworks. Security in the ...
The lone hitch in the thiefs plan came when he tried to exit the stairwell into a courtyard. Finding the door locked, he placed the Mona Lisanow wrapped in a white sheeton the floor and tried to take apart the doorknob. He made little progress before one of the Louvres plumbers appeared on the stairwell. Rather than apprehending him, however, the p...
For more than a day, the Louvres staff had no clue that the Mona Lisa had been stolen. The museums paintings were often removed from the walls for cleaning or photography, so passersby took little notice of the blank space where the portrait was usually located. Finally, at around noon on Tuesday, a visiting artist asked a security guard to track t...
News of the disappearance prompted a public outcry in France. What audacious criminal, what mystifier, what maniac collector, what insane lover, has committed this abduction? wondered the Parisian magazine LIllustration. An army of detectives descended on the Louvre to dust for fingerprints and question witnesses. Cars, steamer passengers and pedes...
Peruggia finally made an attempt to sell his treasure in December 1913. Using the alias Leonard, he sent a letter to a Florentine art dealer named Alfredo Geri and informed him that he had stolen the Mona Lisa and wanted to repatriate it to Italy. After conferring with Giovanni Poggi, director of Uffizi Gallery, Geri invited Peruggia to Florence an...
After a brief tour through Da Vincis homeland, the Mona Lisa was finally returned to the Louvre in January 1914. Peruggia, meanwhile, was charged with theft and put on trial in Italy. During his testimony, he claimed that national pride had inspired him to steal the painting, which he believed had been looted from his native Italy during the Napole...
While Peruggia was eventually forgotten, his daring heist only made the Mona Lisa more famous. At least 120,000 people went to see the painting in the first two days after it was returned to the Louvre. Art lovers and critics launched into fresh speculation about its subjects mysterious smile, and it was referenced in countless cartoons, advertisem...
Jul 17, 2019 · Updated on July 17, 2019. On August 21, 1911, Leonardo da Vinci 's Mona Lisa, today one of the most famous paintings in the world, was stolen right off the wall of the Louvre. It was such an inconceivable crime, that the Mona Lisa wasn't even noticed missing until the following day. Who would steal such a famous painting? Why did they do it?
- Jennifer Rosenberg
Feb 6, 2024 · 6 February 2024. A museum worker called Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa in August 1911. In his book, Noah Charney offers evidence that the theft was motivated by money rather than the...
Sep 13, 2022 · He stole what is now the most famous painting in the world, Leonardo da Vinci ’s Mona Lisa, 1503, from the Louvre in Paris. The art theft caused a media sensation, and it took police a full two years before they caught up with the real culprit.
