The Man Who Stole The Mona Lisa - Female Documentary Narrator
The Mona Lisa…..one of the most famous works of art in the world… painted by Leonardo da Vinci between 1503 and 1506. The painting is actually smaller than most people realize…..only 30 inches by 21 inches and painted on a wood poplar panel. The painting has survived for more than 500 years. It was, at some time during its history, removed from its original frame and efforts have been made ever since to help keep the panel from warping. Although the painting has had many different frames in its history, the frame added in 1909 has remained, with support modifications, until this day. The painting has been subjected to several extensive cleanings, re-varnishing’s, and touch-ups. Before its 1962-1963 tour, the painting was assessed, for insurance purposes, as valued at $100 million (about $720 million in today’s dollars) and hangs at The Louvre. The Louvre, located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement in Paris, was opened as a museum on August 10, 1793.
The Louvre, the world, and indeed Paris in 1911 were not as they are today. There were no elaborate security measures in place, no alarms, and very few guards. Painters specializing in copying works of art would set up their easels right next to a masterpiece and paint. The Mona Lisa was not displayed as it is today, set apart as a central piece. It was merely hung on the wall, sandwiched between two other masterpieces…Correggio’s Mystical Marriage and Titan’s Allegory of Alfonso d’Avalos. The main concern of the museum at this time was vandalism and not theft as there had been several acts of vandalism carried out against works of art hanging in the museum.
Because of this, the museum had on staff a number of workers, handymen and tradesmen who constructed glass cases for some of the art work including the Mona Lisa. They cleaned, touched up and revarnished paintings. The workers would remove paintings from the walls to repair or construct frames. Paintings in the Louvre were often removed from the walls because the museum’s photographers were allowed to take them to their studios without having to sign them out.
One such worker was named Vincenzo Perugia, an Italian immigrant cabinet craftsman who worked at the Louvre from 1908-1911. On the morning of August 21, 1911, Vincenzo either slipped into the Louvre dressed as a worker in the traditional white artist’s smock, or as some think, he hid in a cabinet and emerged the next morning. He quickly made his way to the Salon Care gallery where Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was hanging. He lifted the glass case from the wall, walked past a sleeping guard and made his way to a stairway removing the painting from the case. He removed a knob from a door and calmly walked out of the museum. He then got on a bus and took the painting to his apartment a short distance away where he kept it for the next 2 years.
None of the Louvre’s employees noticed that the painting was missing. In fact, 12 hours after the theft, a caretaker reported that everything in the museum was in order. The next day a painter, Louis Beroud, arrived at the Louvre to sketch the Mona Lisa. All he found were 4 metal hooks on the wall where the painting usually hung. He assumed that one of the photographers had taken the painting. Fully 24 hours later Mr. Beroud asked as to when the photographer would be returning the painting. It was then that the museum realized that the Mona Lisa had been stolen. No one had any idea who could have stolen the painting. The Louvre was closed for a week as police covered the crime scene. When it reopened, there was a massive line waiting to see the spot where the Mona Lisa used to hang.
Thousands of people came to view the empty place on the wall with only the 4 iron pegs….thousands more visitors than when the painting was there. An anonymous visitor even left a bouquet of flowers. Overnight the Mona Lisa became an internationally famous painting. After bringing the painting to his apartment, Vincenzo put it in a closet for safekeeping. He then kept it under a stove in the kitchen and finally in a false bottom trunk. He would take it out occasionally and set it on his kitchen table so he could admire it while eating his meal. Questioning all museum employees, the police searched Perugia’s apartment but failed to find anything. He had hidden the masterpiece this time under a tabletop.
French police were frantically looking for a suspect. What they didn’t know was that Vincenzo Perugia held a deep resentment against France, believing that all of the museum’s Italian renaissance masterpieces, including the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Italy’s museums and galleries during Napoleon’s invasion. It turned out he was wrong, at least about the Mona Lisa. It seems that Leonardo da Vinci himself sold the painting to France’s King Francois I after its completion. One early suspect was none other than Pablo Picasso.
It was discovered that Picasso was using statuettes stolen from the Louvre, given to him by an acquaintance, as models for his paintings. He was intensely questioned by police but when nothing came of it he was released and allowed to go free. Two years had gone by and officials were beginning to think that they would never see the Mona Lisa again. It was in December 1913 that Vincenzo decided to go to Italy and sell the Mona Lisa, thereby returning it to Italy where it properly belonged and providing a nice fortune for his family.
In November 1913 he contacted a Florentine antique dealer named Alfredo Geri via a cryptic letter which said: “The stolen work of Leonardo da Vinci is in my possession. It seems to belong to Italy since its painter was an Italian”. The letter was signed ‘Leonardo’. Geri eventually met with ‘Leonardo” and Perugia allowed Geri to have the painting authenticated. Perugino asked for a half million lire for the painting and that it be hung at the Uffizi and never given back to France. A director of the Uffizi Museum in Florence was called in and authenticated the painting. Perruggia was arrested and tried in Florence.
The Mona Lisa was exhibited all over Italy and returned to the Louvre in 1913. The public went wild at the news of finding the Mona Lisa. Perugia’s defense was his patriotism in that his sole motive for stealing the picture was to return her to Italy. Perruggia was hailed as a national hero in Italy. Perugia’s trial was a spectacle. He jumped and interrupted the Court. He argued with the judge who kept banging the gavel and telling him to be quiet. He argued with his lawyer.
He argued with the prosecutors. Perruggia let loose with emotional outbursts and indignant rage, claiming that Mona Lisa’s beauty had bewitched him, and that his only thought was to rescue her from France. He told the story of how he had fallen in love with a girl who was the exact double of the Mona Lisa, after he had saved her from being attacked by a man with a knife. The young woman’s name was Mat Hilde. When she died, Perruggia, obsessed with grief, planned to steal the Mona Lisa which, to him, was like a portrait of his love. Perruggia contradicted himself many times during his trial. He claimed to have worked alone, then he later incriminated two Italian friends in the theft. The spectators would cheer when he said something and howl when the prosecution tried to make a point.
He was in jail but he got love letters. People sent him bottles of wine. Women baked cakes for him. Eventually, the defense called a psychiatrist who testified that Perruggia was “intellectually deficient” and the sympathetic Italian tribunal, considering him a harmless fool, gave him a reduced sentence of seven months. Since by that time, he had been in jail for nearly eight months, Perruggia was released. Years later rumors began to circulate that Perugia not only had accomplices as he claimed at his trial, but that the whole plan was hatched by a master international con artist named Eduardo de Valfiero.
It was said that Valfiero’s plan was to produce exact fake copies of the real Mona Lisa and sell them. Although some in the art world have pushed the Louvre to do testing to determine the Mona Lisa’s authenticity, museum officials have not responded. Perugia served in the Italian army during World War 1. After the war he married and returned to France, under an assumed name, where he opened a paint store. According to his daughter Celestina, he died at age 44 of a heart attack in 1925. In 1974 the Mona Lisa was moved to the museum’s Salle des Etats where more than 7 million people view her each year.
The biggest winner in the whole story was the Louvre. It now found itself with a world famous painting to hang on its walls. It is said that if it had not been for the Mona Lisas theft that she would never have reached such heights of notoriety that she enjoys today. Perugia’s extraordinary theft had turned the Mona Lisa from a moderately well-known painting into an internationally recognized masterpiece.
