On the morning of August 21, 1911, the world awoke to stunning news: the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic masterpiece, had vanished from the Louvre Museum in Paris. The theft would become one of the most audacious art crimes in history, catapulting the painting to global fame.
The man behind the heist was Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman and former Louvre employee. Peruggia believed the painting rightfully belonged in Italy, having been taken by Napoleon centuries earlier. He was also motivated by the hope of financial gain.
Peruggia’s plan was remarkably simple. Disguised in the white smock worn by museum workers, he hid inside the Louvre overnight. When the museum was quiet in the early morning hours, he approached the Mona Lisa, then hanging on the Salon Carré wall. He removed the protective glass case and frame, tucked the painting under his smock, and walked out of the museum unnoticed.
At first, the Louvre staff assumed the painting had been taken for photography or maintenance. But as hours passed, panic set in. By the following day, newspapers blared headlines about the missing masterpiece. The Louvre closed for a week as detectives scoured the museum for clues.
Suspicion fell on a wide range of people, including the famed artist Pablo Picasso, who was briefly questioned because of his association with avant-garde art circles known for critiquing traditional art institutions. The theft gripped the public imagination, making the Mona Lisa far more famous than it had ever been during its centuries hanging quietly on the Louvre’s walls.
Meanwhile, Peruggia kept the painting hidden in a trunk in his modest Paris apartment. For more than two years, the world wondered about the fate of the enigmatic lady with the mysterious smile.
In 1913, Peruggia finally attempted to sell the painting to an art dealer in Florence, Italy. The dealer, suspecting the artwork’s true identity, alerted authorities. The Mona Lisa was recovered, unharmed, and returned to France amid enormous fanfare.
Peruggia stood trial in Italy, where he claimed patriotic motives for his crime, arguing that the painting should belong to Italy as part of its cultural heritage. While the court acknowledged his nationalism, he was nonetheless sentenced to a year and fifteen days in prison, serving only a portion of his sentence due to his relatively mild punishment for the theft.
The Mona Lisa’s theft transformed the painting into an international icon. Before the heist, it was famous mainly among art enthusiasts and scholars. Afterward, it became the most recognizable artwork in the world—a symbol of artistic genius and cultural heritage.
Today, the Mona Lisa hangs behind bulletproof glass in the Louvre, visited by millions of admirers each year, its legend forever intertwined with Vincenzo Peruggia’s daring theft of 1911.
