The Day Mona Lisa Disappeared

On Monday, August 21st, 1911, the famous work of art – Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa – disappeared from the Louvre Museum in Paris.

That morning, the museum employees noticed that the painting was not in its usual place. They thought that the museum photographer took it to his studio to take its photographs, but he didn’t.

On Tuesday morning, the museum officials immediately contacted the police who searched the Louvre from top to bottom. This took a week because the prestigious art gallery is enormous. The only thing a detective found was the frame of the Mona Lisa.

When the news became public, French newspapers made different hypothesis on the nature of the clamorous event which caused public outrage and interest. One claimed that the thief was an American collector. His plan was to make a copy and return it to the museum. He obviously wanted to keep the original. Another newspaper said that the entire incident was an invention to show that it was easy to steal from the Louvre. Luckily, 27 months later the police found the painting and the thief.

He was an Italian man named Vincenzo Perugia. His intention was to sell the painting to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence for $100,000. Perugia declared that he did this out of his patriotic feelings. He was convinced that the right place for the valuable work of art was Italy. What he didn’t realize was that Leonardo probably painted the Mona Lisa in Italy, but when he went to France, he sold it to King Francis I for 4000 gold coins.

How did Perugia steal the Mona Lisa? He spent Sunday night in the Louvre, hiding in an obscure little room. On Monday morning, when the museum was closed, he entered the room where the masterpiece was, took it off the wall and cut the painting from its frame.

While he was trying to leave the building, he reached a locked door, opened it with a knife, and walked out of the gallery and into the pages of history.