The Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic portrait, is currently housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. (Photo: Instagram)
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world. Her enigmatic smile has long been a source of fascination, and among her most devoted admirers was King François I, who invited Leonardo da Vinci to France and purchased the painting from him in 1518. Such is the popularity of the Mona Lisa that it is housed in the largest room of the Louvre.
According to the Louvre, “It shows Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo – hence her Italian name La Gioconda and her French name La Joconde.”
But the Mona Lisa wasn’t always the most celebrated artwork. It was at the centre of what is known as the “art heist of the century.”
It was on 21 August 1911 that news broke of the Mona Lisa’s disappearance from the Louvre.
According to the website of History, “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 at the time was lax, and the man found it easy to hide away in a storage closet. He stayed inside until the next morning, and early at 7 a.m., he emerged wearing a white apron – the same uniform worn by museum employees. He looked around, then took the Mona Lisa from the wall. He removed its protective glass frame and the wooden panel.
The Mona Lisa had vanished. Nobody initially noticed anything was amiss, as paintings were often removed for maintenance.
When attention finally turned to the missing Mona Lisa, a search was launched, and the glass frame was discovered in a service stairwell. “That same evening, a museum official announced the theft to the world. ‘The Mona Lisa is gone,’ he said. ‘Thus far we haven’t a clue as to who might have committed this crime,’” states History.
The news spread like wildfire. Detectives descended upon the Louvre in search of clues, and “Wanted” posters of the Mona Lisa appeared. Suspects were interrogated, among them the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had once called for the Louvre to be burned down. He was arrested in 1911. His connection to an earlier theft of two ancient statuettes from the Louvre was established, and he ended up implicating Pablo Picasso – a 29-year-old Spanish artist who had purchased them.
The New York Times ran a story titled: “‘LA GIOCONDA’ IS STOLEN IN PARIS; Masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci Vanishes from Louvre — Known as Mona Lisa. FRAME FOUND ON STAIRCASE Picture Not Cut from It, but Carefully Removed — Army of Detectives at Work. ONE OF WORLD’S TREASURES Some Judges Regard the Painting as the Finest Existing — $5,000,000 Said to Have Been Offered for It.”
“Then one day, Vincenzo Peruggia, a glazier who had worked at the Louvre, tried to sell the world’s most famous painting to an Italian art dealer… who alerted the authorities. So the Mona Lisa was recovered – and her fame was all the greater,” states the Louvre.
