The Heist That Turned the Mona Lisa Into a Star

the museum to see her. You could say she's popular, but there was a time when the Mona Lisa was not well known, if you can imagine that, and it took a man named Vincenzo Perugia to launch her into stardom. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria tru Marquis and I'm Holly Fry. The Mona Lisa has been described as quote the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world end quote.

She has been immortalized in everything from Andy Warhol's pop art to Dan Brown's best selling novel The Da Vinci Code. Dais artist Martial Duchamp once caused a stir when he painted a mustache on a cheap reproduction of the piece. Italian master Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in Florence, Italy in fifteen o three or possibly fifteen o four, and probably completed it uh well. No one

is certain when exactly he completed it. Some historians consider the painting to have been completed in about three or four years, although others suggest that it could have been finished any time up to the artist's death in fifteen nineteen. It was then when the King of France, Francois the First purchased the work to hang in Fontainebleau, said to

have been his favorite palace place. Fontainebleau was its home for more than a hundred years, until King Louis the fourteenth took the painting to the newly built Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, the Mona Lisa found itself hanging in Napoleon Bonaparte's bedroom in the Tuilerie for a few years before it was finally installed in its permanent home at the Louver and that is where you'll find her still today. She is hung in the Salle des Eta,

that is room seven one one. The portrait and really it's so well known we probably don't even really need to describe any of this, but just real quick, imagine her. She is a woman dressed in Florentine fashion and pictured seated in a mountainous landscape. The work is a half length portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel, and if you haven't seen it in person, it's actually quite

smaller than many people imagine. It's roughly two and a half by two ft or seventy seven by fifty three centimeters. The piece is a just just a beautiful example of this auto technique, which basically translates from Italian English as to Vanish like smoke. So this style creates subtle transitions between light and shadow and between colors. But it's the subject's enigmatic expression, though, which has given the portrait universal fame.

So the Mona Lisa, as Maria just alluded to, is known for her half smile, but Da Vinci's subject has been talked about and debated for centuries. One of the most common things said about the piece is that the subject eyes follow you. But we can put that one to rest because in a study published in the journal Perception, German scholars found that she is actually looking Dona. I know it's suspenseful to the right. Anything else that you

perceive is just your imagination. Some people claim that there is a hidden code in her eyes. Others are certain that the work is actually a portrait of da Vinci himself, an artist's self portrait. Today experts are pretty darn sure that Italian noblewoman Lisa Gerardini, that was the wife of Italian merchant Francesco del Giocondo, is the face of the Mona Lisa. We know the Mona Lisa as an iconic piece of artwork of the Renaissance, and it's considered nearly

impossible to value because it's simply priceless. Really, it was assessed before it once traveled from Paris to to Washington, d c. And then New York City for a special exhibition held between December of nineteen sixty two and March of nineteen sixty three, and it was at that time when it entered the Guinness Book of Records for being given the highest known insurance evaluation for a painting, a hundred million dollars, and that has helped make it the

target of theft and vandalism. On several occasions. The Mona Lisa has been spray painted. It's been mugged, most recently caked. In nineteen fifty six alone, two people tried to vandalize the work on separate occasions. In the face of so much potential damage, Spanish artist Salvador Dolli once attributed to the painting a quote power unique in all art history to provoke the most violent and different kinds of aggressions.

The first attack on the Mona Lisa was in nineteen fifty six during an exhibition in Montaubon, France, when a visitor through acid at the work. At the end of December that same year, a man named Hugo Unyaga Viegas threw a rock at the painting. He said at the time quote, I had a stone in my pocket and suddenly the idea to throw it came to mind. Viega's rock did not do permanent damage to the painting, although it did manage to damage a small area of the paint.

The Mona Lisa was repaired by experts with the French State. It was back on exhibit just days after the incident, but after such a year the decision was made to place the piece behind protective glass. The Mona Lisa has actually rarely ever left the louver Or France, but in the nineteen seventies it won on a tour that included

exhibition in Japan. In nineteen seventy four, nearly one and a half million people reportedly saw the painting when it traveled to the National Museum in Tokyo, and in April, during the tour, twenty five year old Tomiko Yosu tried to spray the work with red paint. Unlike the in the Moment idea to throw a random rock at the masterpiece,

her attack was politically motivated. In the days leading up to the show's opening, disability activists had raised a red flag about the exhibit, stating that in refusing access to those who needed assistance, the National Museum was discriminating against those living with disability. Yonezu, in an effort to call attention to this, hit the Mona Lisa Well. She hit the Mona Lisa's protective glass to be clear, with an estimated twenty to thirty drops of spray paint. She was

detained and in nive. She was convicted of a misdemeanor and fined three thousand yen her brazen vandalism, Though did affect a change. Tokyo's National Museum announced it would set aside a day when those with disabilities could exclusively visit the Mona Lisa. And then things went pretty quietly for the Mona Lisa for a little while until two thousand nine, more than thirty years after that spray paint incident. In August that year, the painting was again attacked, this time

with a teacup. The scene that day went like this. Approaching the painting, a woman reached into her purse, grabbed the now infamous mug and threw it directly at the face of Mona Lisa. The mug shattered, but the artwork remained undisturbed. Remember it's under that protective glass. According to a spokesperson for the Louver at the time, the woman

had been upset over being denied French citizenship. The museum's statement to The New York Times also included that quote viewing was only disturbed the time it took to pick up the pieces. And then there was a very recent attack at Loop in May a man in his thirties disguised as an elderly woman in a wheelchair through what museum officials later described as a concealed partistory at the painting. Again, the protective glass installed prevented any damage to the piece.

It not the Mona Lisa was smeared with pastry cream. Museum officials suggested that the protester himself, not living with the disability, faking it, chose to use the wheelchair to exploit their reduced mobility policy, which allowed him closer access to the painting. The vandal before being apprehended through rose petals on the ground while shouting think of the earth. There are people who are destroying the earth. Think about it. Artists tell you think of the earth. That's why I

did this. But it was actually the theft of this painting in nineteen eleven. Yes, I'm actual theft, not vandalism, that turned the Mona Lisa into one of the world's most instantly recognizable images. That's right. And with that though, we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor. But when we return, we will introduce the man who made the Mona Lisa a household name, Vincenzo Peruggia. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's tell the story about the

day the Mona Lisa disappeared. The louver was closed from maintenance on August nineteen eleven, the day the Mona Lisa went missing. That morning, a small mustachioed Italian man named Vincenzo Peruggia, dressed in the standard uniform of a Parisian handyman, which was a white worker's smock, entered the museum, probably maybe with other maintenance workers, and made his way to the gallery where the Mona Lisa hung. He removed the painting from its two hundred pound framed enclosure, tucking the

small panel under his smock. He then, well, he then just kind of walked out into the streets of Paris. There is a version of this high story that hasn't added detail, though, and it adds a little bit of a dramatic twist, and it goes like this. Perugia hid in a storage room overnight, planning to escape with the painting in the morning, but when he tried to get out,

he discovered the door was locked. He removed the door knob, but it still would not open until that is a helpful plumber passing by in the hallway lent a hand and opened the door for him. We have no idea if this detail actually happened, but it's a fun story.

Door knob or no door knob, there is more no thing about the theft was discovered until a wealthy museum patron and visiting artist, a man named Louis Berud, arrived to sketch works in the Salon care That was the gallery where the Mona Lisa was at the time exhibited, but where he expected to see da Vinci's masterpiece, he

found only blank wall space. Of course, he reported it immediately right well so, because the Louver routinely removed works from its galleries for photographing, it actually wouldn't have been out of the ordinary to notice that a painting was missing and to think nothing of its absence. And several hours went by before the man notified the guards. We did read that from the steel to the missing painting

report or whatever that may be technically called. As many as possibly twenty six hours may have passed before anyone noticed that the Mona Lisa had left the building. It wasn't until later that evening, after the paintings frame was discovered in the service stairwell, that museum officials announced the Mona Lisa had been stolen. That frame, incidentally, had been donated by Countess de Bienne just two years prior and had not been damaged during the heist, stated museum officials, quote,

the Mona Lisa is gone. Thus far, we haven't a clue as to who might have committed the crime. Curator George Beneditte told the press at the time, and we're paraphrasing him here, that only a practical joker would steal such a prized painting because it would just be too

difficult to fence. And the director of National Museums at the time, a man named Jean Philamole, who was vacationing when the Mona Lisa was stolen, stated in reaction to the news that it must have been simply misplaced, adding quote, you might as well pretend that one could steal the towers of Notre Dame. Francis Gendarme had an alternate theory. They believed that the thief would demand ransom within forty eight hours. Two days passed, though, and nobody came forward.

The entire country of France was stunned at this fact, and there were many theories circulating as to what could have become of the Mona Lisa. One popular Parisian magazine wondered what what audacious criminal? What mystifier? What maniac collector? What insane lover has committed this subduction? What insane lover has committed this? I want that on my tumb stone. What insane loverbduction? I mean I want to be cremated. But still you can marker. I can still say something.

Right there you go. In addition to the frame found in the stairwell, some reports suggest that later in the investigation, guards spoke with a plumber who were called helping a man who was locked in a stairwell, So that kind of leads into that little detail we talked about earlier. But back to that frame, there was a single thumb

print found on it. Harris police inspector Alphonse Bertillon was the first to recognize the value of fingerprints in law enforcement, and as an aside, he's also credited with developing the mug shot. He had, it's reported, hundreds of thousands of prints on file, too many to check against the one found on the frame, so instead he fingerprinted all two hundred fifty seven employees who had been working at the

museum that day. Perugia had briefly worked for a firm that cut glass for the Louver, although we did find some reports suggesting that he had actually just been an employee of the museum, but that's a little unclear, and we don't know if he was fingerprinted. Detectives dusted for fingerprints and questioned witnesses. Cars and pedestrians were stopped and searched at checkpoints throughout the city, and officials circulated those

wanted style posters of the Mona Lisa's face. The New York Times wrote that quote, a great number of citizens have turned amateur Sherlock Holmes is and continued to advance most extraordinary theories. Some thought a forgery ring thieved it, and we're selling knockoffs to wealthy but naive art patrons. Others argued that the man behind the theft had to be banking magnet JP Morgan, who many believed to be a robber baron, and who many believed had surely commissioned

this heist for his own private art collection. One popular rumor in Paris specifically was that Germans had stolen it. There were many, many, many theories here. When French police distributed six thousand, five hundred leaflets about the theft and announced a reward for forty Francs for its return. People started to turn on each other, Neighbors informed on neighbors. There were stories of alleged sightings of the painting in places as far away as Russia and Japan, despite no

good leads on the Mona Lisa's whereabouts. As an aside, the museum did, in the process recover some other stolen loot that was unrelated to this particular theme. There you go. I really love that we got something. I didn't even know this was missing. This was a big, big story for news media, and their coverage of the heist helped turn the work into a notable and recognizable piece of art. Suddenly, the face of the Mona Lisa was everywhere as a

modern audience, It's got hard to grasp that. When The Washington Post first reported about the theft and appraised the paintings value at five million dollars, the newspaper mistakenly ran a picture of the Mona Vanna, which is a distly

different piece of art. The Mona Vanna is a nude charcoal sketch that some art historians theorized I and She might have drawn in preparation for painting the Mona Lisa, but maybe not either way, it's definitely not the Mona Lisa, and so that's I mean, that's actually really a great example of how unknown this work was before it was stolen.

Noah Charney, art history professor, author of the Thefts of the Mona Lisa and founder of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art, has said, quote, if a different one of Leonardo's works had been stolen, then that would have been the most famous work in the world, not the Mona Lisa. He added, quote, there was nothing that really distinguished it per se other than it was a very good work by a very famous artist. That's until it was stolen. The theft is what really skyrocketed its

appeal and made it a household name. At first, a color reproduction was hung in the Mona Lisa's place at the Louver. Then, in December nineteen twelve, Raphael's portrait of Baldisser Castiglione was exhibited there. The investigation remained open, but after two years there were very few leads. On September seventh, nineteen eleven, avant garde writer Guillaume at Pollonier, who had once called for the Louver to be burned down, was arrested and held on suspicion of theft of the Mona Lisa.

A Polonaire became a suspect after one of two things happened. His chapter in this story is told two different ways. One, authorities were able to link missing figurine stolen from the Louver to one of his former assistants, Gary Pierre, who was also a small time thief, and Pierre spilled the

beans on the artist. Alternatively, there is a version that suggests that a Pollonaire and Pierre had a falling out and Pire told the Paris Journal newspaper that he had information on the Mona Lisa to information that included a Pollinaire. Regardless of which version of the story you hear, the outcome was the same. A Pollinaire was exonerated of all charges and he was released, But during his time in custody, he did implicate his friend, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso in

the theft. Picasso had purchased Iberian bronze age statue stolen by Pierre. That's a detail we can't be sure if Picasso knew about or not, but he had purchased those to use his models in his paintings and you can see them in his work. Les Demoiselle d'Avignon is a piece that's considered to have ushered in the style of Cubism, and those models were used for it. After questioning, though authorities dismissed Picasso as a suspect, they did seem to

talk to everyone, and they even interviewed Perugia twice. In his apartment at five Rue Delpita, Saint Luis Us, three miles from the museum. They interviewed him before concluding that he could not be their man. His alibi, well, we came across too in the research. Although the first one is much more commonly reported. That first one is that Perusia may have claimed that he had been working at

a different location the day of the theft. The second one suggests that Perusia may have replied that he learned of the theft from reading about it in the newspapers, and that the reason he was late to work that Monday in August was that he had drunk too much the night before and overslept. Regardless, we know he did it. What authorities did not know though, at the time, was that they were actually in the presence of the mona

Lisa during those interviews. It was stashed in the false bottom of a trunk in Perusia's apartment while they were there questioning him. So with the Mona Lisa case, at this point, the authorities were completely stuck. We are going to take a break for a word from our sponsor now, and when we're back, we will talk about the letter that Perugia sent to a dealer in Florence and the reply he received. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about

Perugia's mistakes and his subsequent arrest. The image of the Mona Lisa was, as we have said, suddenly splashed across front pages of newspapers around the world. Sixty detectives seek stolen Mona Lisa. French public indignant, reported The New York Times. Said author and historian Charnee Quote. The museum had over four hundred rooms, but only two guards and even fewer on duty overnight. There were basically no alarms in play. It was under secure, but to be fair, most museums

were at that time. The theft, he continued, Quote, launched the painting into becoming a household name for people who had never been to Europe and had no interest in art, and it's really just continued from there. In fact, for the very first time, there were accused of people outside the louver. Among them were famous names, including writers Franz Kafka and Max Broade, each waiting for their chance to see the empty space where the painting should have been

on the wall. As the theft gained more and more press attention, both within France and internationally, Perusia kept the painting hidden and it just sat there in his apartment. According to Christopher Marinello of Art Recovery International, which is a company that provides art recovery services to museums as well as to private collectors, Perusia's behavior of stealing and hiding a painting for years is actually a pretty common thing among art thieves, he says. Quote. A typical art

thief tries to get money. When they can't hide it, they store it until they can get money. As soon as art is stolen, it decreases in value. This happened

even in the eighteen hundreds when there was no Internet. Today, everyone knows about every single art theft, whether a turn of the century Matisse painting or a seven foot garden no. The Prefect of the Police had several theories, and was quoted in a nineteen twelve article in The New York Times as saying, the thieves, I am inclined to think there were more than one, got away with it all right. So far nothing is known of their identity and whereabouts.

I am certain that the motive was not a political one. But maybe it is a case of sabotage brought about by discontent among Louver employees. Possibly, on the other hand, the theft was committed by a maniac. A more serious possibility is that La Giaconda was stolen by someone who ends to make a monetary profit by blackmailing the government. Yeah, just in case you didn't recognize. La Gia Conde is another name for the Mona Lisa, based on the fact

that it is probably Lisa Giacondo in the work. So yes. Unbeknownst to everyone at this point, everyone but Perugia, of course, the Mona Lisa was actually still in Paris, and then Perugia made an attempt to sell it to a man named Alfredo Gary, a Florentine antique dealer who frequently advertised for fine art in several Italian newspapers. On November Gary received a letter postmark from Paris regarding the potential sale of the Mona Lisa, details of which would be agreed

upon during a personal meaning. That letter was signed Leonardo, but the sale backfired when the dealer called on Giovanni Pogi, director of the Ofizi Galleries in Florence, for an appraisal, and set up a meeting with Perugia and poe Gi in Milan. The men gathered in Perugia's room at the Tripoli Italian Hotel, where he removed it from its red silk wrapping. Gary later wrote, quote, we placed it on the bed, and to our astonished eyes, the divine Mona

Lisa appeared intact and marvelously preserved. Pogi confirmed that yes, this was the original work, and he convinced Perugia to leave it with him at the Effizi for safekeeping. Perugia demanded one hundred thousand dollars in expenses, and they agreed to both that and to his selling price half a million lira. We did, however, see that asking price alternately referenced as half a million francs. In any case, he wanted a lot of money for it, although not anywhere

close to what it was worth regardless. Though the men did not go to the bank. They instead contacted the Italian police, and on December twel Mona Lisa was recovered in Florence, Italy. The painting was returned to Paris, but first was exhibited at the Uffizi through the end of the year. It's estimated that at least add people visited the painting in the first two days after it was

reinstalled in that empty spot on the wall. Yeah, to give you context for how many people that is, if you have ever been to the louver on a standard day we quitted earlier, that's about thirty thou people wall to wall, elbow to elbow, like it is a tight situation, so double that number. Complete madness. This was huge. These are he was a very big deal that it was back.

Vincenzo Perugia was arrested in his hotel room. His courtroom appearance has been described as quote an unhinged or if you look at the colorful Italian phrase in the court reporting quote that translates literally as outside like a balcony. It's kind of a saying that suggests that things are just absolutely madness. In court, Perugia shouted and he interrupted witnesses. He argued with prosecutors, he argued with his own lawyer.

He first stated that he worked alone on the heist, but then he recanted and implicated two of his friends, neither of whom it turned out, were actually involved. Wherever his story meandered, though he always maintained this one thing, his theft of the Mona Lisa was an act of patriotism. Perugia claimed that he had taken the painting out of

a patriotic duty to bring it home to Italy. He was convinced that the painting had been stolen during battle between France and Italy centuries earlier, and he did not seem to know that it had actually been purchased by the King of France. Barren Square author and historian Noah Charney has said a Prussia quote, he seemed to have genuinely been convinced he would be heralded as a national hero,

and genuinely dismayed to discover he wasn't. He was maybe a few pickles short of a sandwich, but not a lunatic. Peruggia did have other convictions. He was known to be hot headed, and he had prior arrests for robbery. But there was also a kind of weirdly suspicious thing that authorities found in his apartment. He had begun keeping a journal of sorts that included a list of art collectors.

Curiously enough, and that's the evidence that led most people to assume that he had actually done this highest out of one simple thing, greed and not patriotism. On June, Peruggio was sentenced to one year and fifteen days in prison by Florentine courts, a sentence it was reported that

was considered to be pretty light. We actually read a lot of conflicting sentence information for him, but it seems that he served anywhere between six months to that one year in fifteen days of the Mona Lisa, Perugia has said, quote, I fell in love with her. Years after the paintings return. Newspapers called the disappearance of the Mona Lisa quote the most colossal theft of modern times, and also stated, matter of factly that Perugia gave the painting its world fame.

The Mona Lisa continues to be owned by the government of France and it is on permanent display behind that bulletproof protective glass. Of course, in the Louver in Paris. Occasionally there are requests for the Mona Lisa to travel as a special exhibit, including one request in from the Italian city of Florence, which would have returned the Mona Lisa to her origins, at least temporarily. That request was denied. The a FP news agency owned by the French government,

published that quote. The request may have stirred up bad memories among French officials, given that it was stolen by an Italian. Ah, mom MAA, let's talk about our hight hooch, the highst hooge for this one took me a couple of tries. I'm not gonna lie. Sometimes you just want to experiment a little anyway. But here's what I was trying to think about, because the thing that I was trying to honor in all of this is that this is a painting that's very important to two different national identities.

France considers this their baby in some ways. We talked in the episode about how upset the French public was that she had been stolen and a hundred and twenty thousand people in two days being just a crush of humans, and like, again, if you have ever been to the Loop and seen the Mona Lisa. You don't even really get close to her. Not only is she behind glass, she is at a distance that is a lot of

people to see her at a pretty significant remove. Similarly, I know that Perusia would not have been the only person to consider her important to Italy. They may not have the misunderstanding he had about the nature of her arrival in France. But she's obviously also very important to Italian culture because of Da Vinci in Florentine culture in particular too. I wanted to come up with a drink

that kind of criss crossed these things. But the drink I'm coming up with is not really a French drink, although it is called the French seventy and it was invented in Paris. It was invented by a Scottish guy during World War One. Drink it's a reference to artillery blast if you've ever had a French seventy five. It is one of those one of those beverages I have gotten very fond of in recent years, which is really just gin and champagne with a little simple syrup and lemon.

I never so I'm curious about. Yeah, it is my go to brunch drink. You keep your mimosa. I'm drinking French. It's because of the gin. I just never would have ordered it. Now that I'm coming along with jin, perhaps I will. And then, of course I wanted to think about that and italianify it. That's a word today, but I did it in a very different way. So first of all, this is a drink I'm calling She's in the trunk. You're right, it is a name that I love.

I thought it would make you giggle. We're not doing gin, though, and we're gonna use some ingredients that are a little more Italian in origin. The first one not necessarily, but it's common throughout the world. We're going to do an ounce of dark rum, then an ounce of muretto, which is of course very Italian. I think after this you're probably gonna want to add just a splash of simple

syrup or jaw you use or jah. You're doubling down on that almond flavor, and that's very much one to taste, because some people don't like much sugar in a drink like this, and some people do. But then you're gonna top it. You can mix those together in a shaker if you want, or you can stir them together, but you want, I recommend stirring with ice because you want them to be cold, because you're going to pour them into a chill champagne glass and top it with four

to five ounces of prosecco. This is one of those things. It's interesting if you look up in like bartending guides French, they're considered to be not really that strong a drink, even though it's all alcohol. Champagne's a b V is low enough. However, if you're like me, you can drink spirits all day long, but champagne really will hit you hards. Heaven.

I don't know what the deal is there. It's not like I'm drinking it faster like people are like, oh, because you drink it faster, because there's I'm like no, even if I'm just sipping, I don't. I'm champagne sensitive for some reason, or prosecco, any of the sparklings get me, the bubbles do something anyway, this will hit you hard

if you're not careful. So to do the mock tail version, you're gonna do an ounce of I would do like a dark spiced tea, like a team meant for a chie or something in lieu of that dark rum, because

dark rum is often spiced as well. You're gonna do probably half an ounce to an ounce if you really like sweet of an orja syrup, so you do get that almond flavor that you would get from amaretto, and then you're just gonna do like a light ginger ale on top of that, and you'll still have a nice amber colored As we are heading into autumn in the northern Hemisphere, it's a pretty good autumn sip that isn't

all of the like traditional flavors. If you're one of those people that's I'm burned out on pumpkin and apple things, I don't understand that, but I do know that people get that happens from time to time. That yummy almond flavor with the prosecco feels very much like a cheerful version of fall to me. It's so that is she's in the trunk. In the trunk, which sounds a little dark if you don't know, it's about a piece of art,

but we all know. So it's fine. If you try it, you drink respond stably and you're careful, and if you try the mocktail. You will find it refreshing and delightful as well. Those bubbles don't get you. You can drink of all day. It might make you burp, worst the worst that can happen, the worst that can happen, you'll burp.

Have a yummy a drink once I'll wake another. We are so thankful that you have spent this time with us today talking about the Mona Lisa, who was a fascinator, that's for sure, and we cannot wait to see you right back here next week where we will have another artist and similar beverages. Criminalia is a production of Shonda

land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,