Vincenzo Peruggia, The Man Who Stole The Mona Lisa
He stole the most famous painting in the world — and changed the course of history.
In 1911, a disgruntled Italian named Vincenzo Peruggia walked into the Louvre Museum dressed like a museum employee. A few minutes later, he walked out carrying a 400-year-old portrait.
That painting was the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.
The theft made headlines around the world. Detectives descended on the Louvre searching for clues, even interviewing a young Pablo Picasso as a suspect. But Peruggia was one step ahead — and he almost got away with it.
Why did Vincenzo Peruggia steal the Mona Lisa? How did he conceal the famous portrait for over two years? And why was the art thief ultimately caught?
Discovering the Crime
In 1910, Théophile Homolle, France’s Director of the National Museums, confidently declared that it was impossible to steal artwork from the Louvre. Homolle boasted, “You might as well pretend that one could steal the towers of Notre Dame!”
One year later, while Homolle was away on vacation, the Mona Lisa disappeared.
The Louvre had been photographing works in its collection to catalog them. Thanks to the technical limitations of photography, workers were carrying pieces to the roof to snap pictures in natural light.
One moment, the Mona Lisa hung on the wall in a crowded gallery. The next moment, the painting disappeared. And for 28 hours, no one noticed the empty hooks where the Mona Lisa had hung.
That fact alone says a lot about the painting’s popularity in 1911. Today, if the Mona Lisa went missing, the theft would be discovered in minutes.
Even worse, museum workers weren’t the first to notice the theft. Instead, an artist who wanted to paint the Grand Gallery complained about the missing da Vinci. His landscape just wouldn’t be the same with a blank spot on the wall.
The eager artist convinced a guard to check how long the painting would be on the roof being photographed. When the guard checked on the roof, he finally realized the Mona Lisa wasn’t in the museum at all.
Once the Louvre realized the portrait had vanished, they sounded the alarm and called the police. The entire museum shut down for a week.
Stealing the Mona Lisa
It was one of the greatest art heists in history — and the thief nearly got away with it.
How did Vincenzo Peruggia walk away with the Mona Lisa?
Peruggia wasn’t your average thief. He’d worked in the Louvre installing protective glass around several important works, including the Mona Lisa. That gave him an advantage.
While investigators invented elaborate plots to explain the theft, the truth was much simpler.
Here’s how Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa: he simply walked into the Louvre on a Monday morning dressed as a worker. He waited until the Grand Gallery was empty and walked up to the painting. Then he took the Mona Lisa off the wall, wrapped it up in his white worker’s smock, and walked out the front door.
No one stopped him.
By the time the police realized a crime had been committed, Peruggia had already hidden the painting in his Paris apartment. The Mona Lisa would remain concealed in the false bottom of Peruggia’s trunk for the next two years.
It became the crime of the century — at least in the art world.
Hunting an Art Thief and Catching Picasso
Detectives descended on Paris to solve the crime. Who could have stolen da Vinci’s masterpiece?
Newspapers around the world reported on the theft. A New York Times headline blared “60 Detectives Seek Stolen Mona Lisa, French Public Indignant.”
But dozens of detectives couldn’t solve the crime.
The police called in Alphonse Bertillon, the mastermind who pioneered the idea of using fingerprints to solve crimes. But despite fingerprinting every worker in the Louvre, Bertillon couldn’t nab the culprit.
Authorities offered a massive reward for information. And still the police couldn’t figure out who stole the portrait.
Finally, police arrested a poet named Guillaume Apollinaire — their only arrest during the multi-year investigation.
Apollinaire was innocent. But the arrest wasn’t completely fruitless. Apollinaire, so frightened by the accusation, pointed the finger at another artist: Pablo Picasso.
Still in his 20s, Picasso confessed to possessing stolen Bronze Age statues from Iberia. The police confiscated the statues, which had been stolen from the Louvre in 1907. But Picasso wasn’t the thief — he’d bought the statues on the black market.
Ultimately, police released Picasso because no evidence connected him with the theft of the Mona Lisa.
The whole time, Vincenzo Peruggia had the famous painting hidden in his Paris apartment. Peruggia considered turning in the painting to collect the reward. But he didn’t want to risk arrest. And Peruggia had a larger goal in mind.
Why did Vincenzo Peruggia Steal the Mona Lisa?
For two years, da Vinci’s most famous work sat at the bottom of a chest in a Paris apartment. Why did Vincenzo Peruggia steal the Mona Lisa if he planned to simply hide the portrait?
History motivated Peruggia.
The art thief claimed the portrait should be returned to Italy, the birthplace of its creator Leonardo da Vinci. Peruggia blamed the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte for stealing the work from Italy, where it belonged.
But Peruggia’s self-declared patriotic act had a big problem. Napoleon did not steal the Mona Lisa — although he took countless works of art from Italy to France during his time as emperor. Instead, Leonardo da Vinci himself took the Mona Lisa with him to France, where his assistant sold the portrait to King Francis I.
The Mona Lisa spent nearly 300 years in France before Napoleon rode south at the head of an army to seize Renaissance masterpieces for his new imperial collection.
Unaware of history, Peruggia pursued his goal of repatriating the painting.
Catching the Art Thief
Over two years after successfully stealing the Mona Lisa, Peruggia read an advertisement in his local paper. A Florentine art dealer named Alfredo Geri introduced himself as “a buyer at good prices of art objects of every sort.”
Peruggia took a risk. He wrote Geri a letter, using the pseudonym “Leonardo Vincenzo,” and admitted that he had the Mona Lisa. But Peruggia’s motives were not purely financial, he claimed. The art thief wanted to return the painting to its homeland, righting an injustice perpetrated by the French.
In December 1913, Peruggia boarded a train in Paris with the Mona Lisa. Once in Florence, he met with Geri to discuss terms. Geri contacted Giovanni Poggi, the director of the famous Uffizi Gallery in France. The pair visited Peruggia’s hotel room, where the art thief showed off the stolen painting.
Once Poggi confirmed its authenticity, police stormed the hotel and arrested Peruggia.
During his police interrogation, Peruggia proclaimed himself a patriot. His only thought, the thief declared, was returning the Mona Lisa to Italy.
Peruggia’s trial took place in Florence, where a sympathetic court sentenced him to only eight months in prison.
Before the Mona Lisa made the journey back to the Louvre, it went on display at the Uffizi, where Italians flocked to see Leonardo’s masterpiece back in the city where Leonardo first painted it.
As for Homolle, the director of France’s national museums who claimed the Louvre was impenetrable, he was forced to resign.
The Legend of Mona Lisa
Vincenzo Peruggia didn’t know his history — but his daring theft changed history.
After two years hidden away in a suitcase, the Mona Lisa rocketed to a new level of fame. Crowds pushed into the Uffizi and the Louvre to see the painting in person.
Soon, everyone agreed that the Mona Lisa was the most famous painting in history.
For centuries, artists had admired da Vinci’s portrait and French kings adorned their walls with the smiling woman. Art critics called it one of the best portraits — or perhaps the best portrait of a woman — but didn’t generally rank it as history’s greatest painting.
As for the public, the Mona Lisa wasn’t well-known. It was one of dozens of paintings displayed in the Louvre’s Grand Gallery, and it didn’t draw people to the museum — until the painting vanished.
Without Vincenzo Peruggia, the Mona Lisa might have stayed one of many portraits from the Renaissance. Thanks to the theft, it’s the most recognizable painting in the world.
What if Peruggia had known his history a little better? What if he’d chosen a different painting to steal, like one of the many Napoleon actually hauled over the Alps and never returned? History would have taken a different path — and the lines to see the Mona Lisa wouldn’t be as long.
For more tales on the intersection between history and art, check out Through Mona Lisa’s Eyes, which investigates the mysteries behind history’s most famous artworks.
Bruce Wilson Jr. is the author of nine books on history, available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook. Visit Bruce Wilson’s website to learn more.
