Theft of the Mona Lisa

On 21 August 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia, a 29-year-old Italian glazier, removed a pane of glass that he had previously installed and took the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. The museum was closed to the public that day, and the room was empty. Around 7 a.m., the guards were not all on duty. Peruggia removed the glass and the frame, then slipped the painting under his work shirt. The portrait, painted on poplar wood, weighed only a few kilograms and did not attract attention in a museum where workers circulated. He left the room, walked along the first-floor corridor, and joined a small service staircase. According to his own testimony, a locked door stopped him, and a passing plumber opened it without suspecting anything. Peruggia exited through the Visconti courtyard, passed the guard, and emerged onto the Rue de Rivoli.

Discovery of the missing painting

The next day, painter Louis Béroud, accustomed to the place, arrived with an easel under his arm to work in front of the painting but found only a wall. They searched the corridors, cupboards, and storerooms, and a newspaper offered 55,000 francs as a reward for whoever found the work.

Investigation and false leads

The Mona Lisa was kept in Peruggia's room in the 10th arrondissement for two years. He was questioned at his home as early as November 1911 and explained that he had installed the glass in the Square Room where the Mona Lisa was hanging. Several accounts of the investigation note that his name did not appear on the list of people whose fingerprints were recorded, although the fingerprint found on the glass case would have been his.

False suspects and police focus

On 7 September 1911, the police visited Picasso. While the real thief slept peacefully a few metro stops from the Louvre, the investigators looked toward the avant-garde. The thread passed through an ex-secretary whom the poet Guillaume Apollinaire had taken in at his home, a young man described by his contemporaries as cosmopolitan, funny, and indifferent to others' property. This link was enough to shift Apollinaire and his circle into the case. Picasso, who frequented the poet, ended up in the same current. Apollinaire was arrested and briefly imprisoned, Picasso was questioned, and both were subsequently released. Franceinfo recalls that the two men were "temporarily suspected."

Recovery of the Mona Lisa

The truth came from Florence in 1913 when Peruggia tried to sell the painting to an antiquarian, Alfredo Geri, who alerted the police. Peruggia claimed to have acted alone. The painting remained in Paris for two years before being found in Florence. The press eagerly covered the case, and the painting moved from the status of a respected masterpiece to that of a global icon. Le Figaro wrote that this theft "greatly contributed to the current notoriety of the painting."

Return and aftermath

The return was made in great style: the Council of Ministers sent to Italy the director of the National Museums and the chief curator of paintings at the Louvre to bring back the work. In 1914, the Parisians welcomed it with overflowing enthusiasm. Peruggia would have been sentenced to one year and 15 days in prison, according to several accounts of the case, barely more than what Apollinaire had experienced in a cell that would never have been his.