The most famous painting in the world - Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa had a very turbulent history. When it was stolen on August 21, 1911, the police were among the first to accuse the famous painter Pablo Picasso.
The artistic "robbery of the century" as it was called - the robbery of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in Paris took place on August 21, 1911.
The disappearance was first noticed by the painter Luis Beroud when in the hall where the painting has been exhibited for the last five years, instead of the painting, he found only a frame. Although known, the painting at that time still did not have the cult status it enjoys today and was not exhibited in a special gallery but in a series, along with other paintings from the same period.
It was noted that the search had to wait several hours because the guards, who were first alerted by Beroud, thought that the painting had been deliberately removed for restoration.
After the Louvre confirmed the theft, the Mona Lisa suddenly found its way onto the front pages of newspapers around the world. The New York Times called the theft a national scandal.
French newspapers blamed American millionaires, and some even claimed that Germany was behind it all.
When it was finally established that there were no paintings, the entire Louvre was closed for a week, and Paris was literally under siege.
The theft caused a big scandal in Paris. The French government fired the director of the Louvre. At the site where the Mona Lisa was exhibited, the museum exhibited works inspired by Leonardo’s masterpiece for the next two years.
The main suspect - Picasso!
Police first arrested the controversial French poet Guy Apollinaire, who publicly called for the burning of the Louvre. During interrogation, Apollinaire cast suspicion on his friend Pablo Picasso when he was rumored to be buying stolen works of art.That is how Picasso was arrested as a suspect…
During the interrogation, the two artists gave contradictory statements and denied each other, which further aroused suspicion.
It turned out that Picasso owned items stolen from the Louvre that were stolen for him by a fan - two Iberian statues (three were stolen) on which he later painted his revolutionary work "Miss Avignon".
To make matters worse, the fan who stole the statues was Apollinaire's friend - Onore Josef Gary Peret. A few weeks after the theft of the Mona Lisa, he was caught after he sold the third statue to a Parisian newspaper which immediately suspected that he was connected to the theft of the Mona Lisa.
However, it turned out that neither he, nor Picasso and Apollinaire had anything to do with the theft of the famous Mona Lisa.
Theft or "return home"
The painting was saved by Italian authorities who, two years later, captured a certain Vincenzo Perugia when he tried to sell the Mona Lisa to a local reseller.
Perugia knew the Louvre well, because he helped build the protective glass that protected the Mona Lisa. On August 21, 1911, he hid in the museum premises and at dawn, he stole the famous painting in just a few minutes.
It was revealed that Perugia hid the painting in his apartment in Paris for two years, and then he started contacting art dealers in Italy, offering the painting as a symbol of national pride. It was December 12, 1913, when the police broke into his apartment in Florence and found the Mona Lisa there, behind a false wall.
To this day, the theory remains that Perugia was actually part of a larger conspiracy to sell copies around the world after the theft of the original.
Perugia defended himself by saying that he wanted to "bring home" the Mona Lisa. In a cover letter he sent to potential "buyers", he stated that he intended to return the painting to Italy, and that he expected 500,000 lire "compensation" for this patriotic act for his expenses.
On that wave, when the police confiscated the painting, part of the public demanded that it stay in Italy. However, the Italian government agreed to return the Mona Lisa to the Louvre Museum.
After exhibiting in Rome, Milan and Florence, the Mona Lisa was returned to France with great fanfare on January 4, 1914.
As for Perugia, he received a mild sentence of seven months in prison and after his release from prison he lived a peaceful life, got married and started a family.
In the long run, this only contributed to the popularity of the Mona Lisa, which became even more famous after its discovery.
It is a very interesting story about the Mona Lisa, it is important that they managed to bring it back, the Italians could have gone crazy.