The Mona Lisa was stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian workman who had worked at the Louvre. He took it from the Salon Carré on the morning of Monday, 21 August 1911, hid it under his smock and kept it in his Paris apartment for more than two years.
He was caught in December 1913, in a Florence hotel room, when he tried to sell it to an art dealer. By then the theft had made the portrait famous.
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Catching him should have taken days, not years. Peruggia left a fingerprint on the frame he abandoned in a service stairway. Investigators compared it with the prints of 257 Louvre employees and found nothing. His own prints were already in the police files, in a system so cumbersome that no one could search it.
Then the detectives came to his door. They questioned him twice at his apartment, and when he missed two appointments at the police station, they went back. They never saw the painting.
A workman with a record had taken the most famous portrait in the world from the most famous museum in the world, and for two years the police looked everywhere except under his table.
How did Peruggia walk out of the Louvre?
Monday was the Louvre's weekly closing day, and the building was nearly empty. At about seven in the morning, Peruggia came in through the door used by the workmen, wearing the white smock of a museum workman.
Once the Salon Carré was empty, he lifted the Mona Lisa off the four iron pegs that held it. He carried it to a service stairway, took off the protective case and the frame, and hid them on the landing behind pictures made by art students. Then he wrapped the bare panel in his smock and tucked it under his arm.
One door still stood in his way. The service door at the foot of the stairs was locked. A plumber who took him for an employee unlocked it, and Peruggia left the building.
The wall stayed empty for a full day. On Tuesday 22 August, the painter Louis Béroud came to sketch in the Salon Carré and found four iron pegs where the portrait had hung. A section head of the guards said it must be at the photographers. A few hours later, he confirmed it was not, and the Louvre closed for a week while the police went after the wrong men.
What You'll Discover
Who the police arrested instead.
What he asked Florence to pay.
What Italy did with the thief.
Whether a forger's scheme was behind it.