Someone stole Mona’s heart

In 1911 the painting was stolen, causing an immediate media sensation.

People flocked to the Louvre to view the empty space where the painting had

once hung, the museum’s director of paintings resigned, and the poet Guillaume

Apollinaire and artist Pablo Picasso were even arrested as suspects. Two years later

an art dealer in Florence alerted local authorities that a man had tried to sell him the

painting. Police found the portrait stashed in the false bottom of a trunk belonging to

Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian immigrant who had briefly worked at the Louvre

fitting

glass on a selection of paintings, including the Mona Lisa. He and two other workers

had taken the portrait from the wall, hid with it in a closet overnight, and ran off with

it in the morning. Peruggia was arrested, tried, and imprisoned, while the Mona Lisa

took a tour of Italy before making its triumphant return to France.