• The Mona Lisa Robbery

  • Apr 23 2025
  • Length: 4 mins
  • Podcast

The Mona Lisa Robbery

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  • Summary

  • On August 21, 1911, the painting by the 31-year-old Italian craftsman Vincenzo Peruggia was stolen, who was working at the Louvre at that time. He had hidden himself overnight in a closet within the museum, detached the painting from its frame, and on the following day, presumably wrapped in his smock, smuggled it out of the museum. Although a left thumbprint was secured on the protective glass case of the painting, it was simply forgotten to match this clue with the anthropometric card of the perpetrator and occasional criminal available with the police. Initially, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the painter Pablo Picasso came under suspicion of having stolen the Mona Lisa. On August 30, 1911, Géry Pieret, who had at times lived with Apollinaire, had confessed to a Parisian newspaper as a thief of sculptures stolen from the museum's storage and sold to "a painter." He returned one of the sculptures to the newspaper. A few days later, Picasso brought two more of these sculptures, which he had purchased from Pieret through Apollinaire, to the newspaper after being promised anonymity. When the newspaper reported on September 6, 1911, the police, who had meanwhile determined Pieret's connection to Apollinaire, arrested the poet. During questioning, he also implicated Picasso to exonerate himself. Picasso was subsequently questioned on September 9, 1911, although not arrested. Although Pieret had no knowledge of the theft of the Mona Lisa, he also announced that another thief would soon return the Mona Lisa. However, the court could ultimately not prove Apollinaire's or Picasso's complicity in the theft of the sculptures, let alone the Mona Lisa, and the artists were acquitted. Further investigations by the police led nowhere, and the theft remained unsolved for more than two years. For the Louvre, it meant a huge scandal. The government dismissed the museum director, and for three weeks, the story dominated the headlines. Many citizens visited the Louvre to see the empty space on the wall, while street vendors outside the Louvre sold postcards and reproductions of the Mona Lisa. To fill the empty space, Raphael's painting "Baldassare Castiglione," a work strongly influenced by the Mona Lisa, was hung in its place. In March 1912, the Louvre acquired Camille Corot's "Woman with a Pearl," the most famous modern homage to Leonardo's Mona Lisa. In 1913, the Mona Lisa was no longer listed in the Louvre's catalog. Peruggia had hidden the Mona Lisa a few meters away from the Louvre in his apartment, in a hole in the wall. Ultimately, however, he wanted to bring it "home" to Italy. Therefore, on December 12, 1913, he tried to sell the painting to the art dealer Alfredo Geri in Florence. Geri received a letter signed "Leonardo," in w...
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