He Stole the Mona Lisa and Hid It in a Trunk for Two Years

On a Monday morning in August 1911, while the Louvre was closed, a man in a white workman's smock lifted a small painting off the wall and walked out with it under his coat. Nobody noticed for more than a day. The painting was the Mona Lisa. For two years, the most famous painting in the world simply vanished. The police arrested a poet and questioned Pablo Picasso. They had the thief's fingerprints and his photograph on file the whole time. And the painting was in a trunk, in a little room in Paris, a short walk from the museum. Then the thief wrote to an art dealer in Florence, signed the letter "Leonardo", and asked him to come and see it. Chapters 0:00 A closed museum 0:43 The handyman 1:55 The Monday 3:09 The empty wall 4:57 The trunk 6:08 Florence Vincenzo Peruggia served about seven months. Before the theft, most people had never heard of the Mona Lisa. After it, everyone knew her face. Sources Wikipedia, "Vincenzo Peruggia" Wikipedia, "Mona Lisa" The Collector and Sortir à Paris, on the Louvre's director and the investigation Mail & Guardian (2011), on the thumbprint Some details vary between accounts (which thumb left the print, how the police files were indexed, the hotel's later name); the film says "by most accounts" where the sources disagree. #truecrime #heist #history