The “Mona Lisa” is probably the best-known painting in the world. If I asked you to close your eyes and imagine what it looks like, you’d probably do a pretty good job. But the painting wasn’t always so well-known. Before 1911, it was mostly known as a masterwork piece in the insular French art world. But on Aug. 21 of that year, it became a global sensation.
Just over 400 years after Leonardo da Vinci painted the portrait, it disappeared from a gallery in the Louvre. Suddenly, it was a headline in newspapers across the world.
So, who was the culprit, and how’d they do it? Pretty simply, it turns out: Three Italian handymen took it. The ringleader, Vincenzo Peruggia, had installed the glass case around the “Mona Lisa,” and knew exactly how to take it out. He couldn’t find anywhere to sell the portrait, though, so he hid it in a trunk in the boardinghouse he stayed in.
Around two years later, Peruggia tried to offload the painting to a Florence art dealer. But the dealer had a sense that it was the original portrait, which the manager of a gallery later confirmed. Peruggia pleaded guilty to the heist, serving just seven months in prison. Read more here and here.
