​THE THEFT
On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa disappeared from her place on the wall in the Salon Carré in the Louvre.
Even more surprising, this famous piece of art remained missing for ​nearly 2-1/2 years.​
It was the biggest news story of its day, making headlines around the world. French police were completely baffled and they grasped at every possible lead. Even Pablo Picasso was questioned. (He had nothing to do with the theft although he did have stolen statues from the Louvre in his possession.) As time passed, Parisians resigned themselves to never seeing Leonardo's masterpiece again -- even though the M0na Lisa and her kidnapper were hiding under their very noses -- in a slum less than 2 miles from the Louvre.
The Mona Lisa Was Stolen?
THE TRUTH
In 1976, filmmaker Joe Medeiros learned about the theft of the Mona Lisa and so began a 35-year-long obsession with the Peruggia and his motive for stealing the painting. Was it patriotism or something else? In 2008, Medeiros met Peruggia's 84-year-old daughter Celestina, but her father died when she was a baby so she knew less about him than Medeiros did. But she wanted the truth, too. So Medeiros and his team traveled to the places Vincenzo Peruggia lived and worked, poured over thousands of original Louvre documents, police reports, court files and newspaper clippings -- then found in the Florence archives Peruggia's letters to his parents - and these held the missing piece of his story.
The Thief
In December 1913, an Italian workman, Vincenzo Peruggia, brought the painting to Florence, Italy. had written to an art dealer named Alfredo Geri telling him that he wished to return the masterpiece to Italy because he believed that all Italian art in the Louvre had been stolen from Italy by Napoleon. Geri responded inviting Peruggia to bring him the Mona Lisa. Peruggia arrived with the painting, handed it over to the Uffizi Gallery and was subsequently arrested.
The recovery of the painting caused a bigger sensation than its theft. The Mona Lisa, was displayed in Florence, Rome and Milan and then sent back to her Parisian home.