I’ve always liked true-crime stories where the twist isn’t a mastermind at all — it’s someone painfully ordinary who just happened to be standing in the right place at the right time. Nothing fits that better than what happened to the Mona Lisa 115 years ago this week. Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting disappeared from the Louvre on Monday, August 21, 1911, and the man responsible wasn’t a professional thief at all — he was a former Louvre handyman who simply walked out wearing the same white work smock every other employee had on that day.
The Theft
The man’s name was Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian decorator who had briefly worked at the Louvre starting in 1908, cleaning and reframing paintings and building protective cases for some of them — including, likely, the Mona Lisa’s own glass case, which means he probably knew exactly how to open it in minutes. On Monday, August 21, 1911, he entered the museum around 7am through the employees’ door, wearing a white smock like everyone else on staff, indistinguishable from any other worker. It was a quiet morning: the Louvre was closed to the public that day, as it was every Monday, and it was nearly empty on top of that because it was the middle of the summer holidays.
When the Salon Carré, where the painting hung between works by Correggio and Titian, was briefly empty, Peruggia lifted the Mona Lisa off the four iron pegs securing it to the wall and carried it to a nearby service stairwell. There, he pried the painting free of its heavy frame and protective glass case, hiding the discarded pieces behind stacked student artwork on the stairwell landing. The popular version of this story has him smuggling the painting out under his smock, but that particular detail doesn’t hold up: Peruggia stood only about 5’3”, and the panel measures roughly 21 by 30 inches, too large to conceal that way on someone his size. Instead, he simply left through a locked service door — a plumber, assuming he was still an employee, unlocked it for him. Source: Wikipedia, Vincenzo Peruggia.
Discovered Missing
The theft wasn’t discovered until the next day, August 22, 1911, when the painter Louis Béroud arrived in the Salon Carré intending to copy the Mona Lisa and found only four iron pegs and a blank wall. Museum staff first assumed the painting had simply been taken away to be photographed. Once the loss was confirmed, the Louvre closed for a full week for the investigation, and dozens of police combed the museum for clues. Source: Wikipedia, Vincenzo Peruggia.
Two Years in a Trunk
Peruggia hid the painting in his Paris apartment for roughly two years, kept in a trunk rather than any more elaborate hiding spot. Police actually visited and questioned him twice during that stretch — he had, after all, helped build the very glass case the painting had been pulled from — but he wasn’t treated as a serious suspect, and one detective reportedly finished writing his report leaning on the table under which the trunk sat, without ever realizing what was inside it. Source: Wikipedia, Vincenzo Peruggia.
The Wrong Suspects
While the real thief sat on the painting a few miles away, the investigation swept up two much more famous names. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire came under suspicion, and was actually arrested and imprisoned for a period; Apollinaire in turn implicated his friend, the painter Pablo Picasso, who was brought in for questioning. Both men were ultimately cleared and had nothing to do with the theft. Source: Wikipedia, Mona Lisa.
Caught in Florence
Peruggia eventually grew impatient. In December 1913, after roughly two years, he contacted Alfredo Geri, a Florence art dealer, using an alias Wikipedia records simply as “Leonardo V.,” telling him he wanted to return the painting to what he considered its rightful home, Italy, and apparently expecting a reward for doing so. Geri brought in Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery, who authenticated the painting, and police arrested Peruggia at his hotel on December 12, 1913. At trial, the court accepted to some degree that his motive was patriotic and treated it as an extenuating circumstance: he was sentenced to one year and fifteen days, but ultimately served only about seven months after an appeal. Source: Wikipedia, Vincenzo Peruggia.
Home to the Louvre
Before it went back to Paris, the painting toured Italy on exhibition, drawing headlines and crowds everywhere it appeared — contemporary newspaper reports describe a crowd as large as 30,000 people in Florence alone. It returned to the Louvre and went back on public display around January 4, 1914. Source: Wikipedia, Vincenzo Peruggia.
Before the theft, the Mona Lisa was respected inside the Louvre but wasn’t yet the singularly famous painting it is today. The commonly cited explanation, echoed by Wikipedia’s own account, is that the two years of worldwide newspaper coverage, the false suspects, and the eventual recovery are what turned it into the most famous painting on Earth. Peruggia, for his part, never actually profited from any of it — he’d reportedly tried and failed to sell it in London beforehand, and the closest he came to a reward was the leniency the court showed him for claiming it was all done out of patriotism.