The Mona Lisa Vanished for Two Years, and Picasso Was a Suspect

On August 22, 1911, a painter arrived at the Louvre and found only four iron pegs where the Mona Lisa should have been. The investigation was a fiasco: the poet Apollinaire was jailed, Picasso was questioned, and the thief spent two years with the painting hidden in a trunk in Paris. This is the story of the theft that made the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world, told with the photographs and newspapers of the time. ▶ If you liked this, watch next: • The All Saints' Day Earthquake That Made Europe Question God —    • The All Saints' Day Earthquake That Made E...   • The Great Emu War: When Australia Sent Machine Guns Against 20,000 Birds —    • The Great Emu War: When Australia Sent Mac...   • Napoleon Walked Alone Toward the Guns Sent to Stop Him, and Took Back France in 19 Days —    • Napoleon Walked Alone Toward the Guns Sent...   ▶ Playlist “True Stories from History | Season 1”:    • True Stories from History | Season 1   ▶ En español:    • El robo de la Mona Lisa: dos años desapare...   ▶ You may also like The Last Ducat (bubbles, frauds and crashes in history):    / @thelastducathistory   Subscribe for new stories every Tuesday and Sunday. Chapters: 0:00 Four pegs on the wall 1:03 Famous… but not that famous 1:22 An ordinary Monday 2:21 The scandal 3:13 The poet and the painter 4:40 The thief 5:47 Florence, 1913 6:41 Patriot or thief? 7:33 The most famous smile in the world Note: in the video we say “around ten million” visitors a year; that was the 2018 figure. Today the Louvre gets nearly nine million (8.7 million in 2024). Sources: Noah Charney, The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World's Most Famous Painting (ARCA, 2011). Dorothy y Thomas Hoobler, The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection (Little, Brown, 2009): Apollinaire, Pieret, las estatuillas ibéricas, Picasso ante el juez. Wikipedia (EN), «Vincenzo Peruggia»: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenz... Wikipedia (EN), «Mona Lisa»: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa Franz Kafka, diarios de viaje (París, septiembre de 1911): las colas ante el hueco vacío. Music (YouTube Audio Library): False Vacuum Decay - The Grey Room & Density & Time; The Empty Moons of Jupiter - DivKid; Traverse The Sky - Asher Fulero; Videodrome - National Sweetheart Narrated with an AI-generated voice (ElevenLabs). Archival images in the public domain or under free licenses; original maps made with Natural Earth data.