Mugshot of Vincenzo Perugia, the Italian man who stole the Mona Lisa out of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Perugia claimed he completed the act out of patriotism, insisting the painting belonged in Leonardo da Vinci’s home country, Italy, and not France.
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| The police record of Vincenzo Peruggia in 1909, two years before the theft of Mona Lisa. (Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images) |
Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman who had previously worked at the Louvre, stole the Mona Lisa on August 21, 1911. He entered the museum dressed in a worker’s smock, hid in a closet overnight, and then, while the museum was closed, removed the painting from its frame and walked out with it hidden under his smock.
Peruggia kept the Mona Lisa hidden in a false-bottom trunk in his Paris apartment for two years. During this time, the theft caused a sensation, and even famous artists like Pablo Picasso were questioned as suspects.
Peruggia’s motive, he claimed, was patriotic: he believed the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Italy by Napoleon and wanted to return it to its homeland. However, Leonardo da Vinci had actually sold the painting to King Francis I of France centuries earlier.
Peruggia was finally caught in December 1913 when he attempted to sell the painting to an art dealer in Florence, Italy, named Alfredo Geri. Geri, along with Giovanni Poggi, the director of the Uffizi Gallery, authenticated the painting and then alerted the police, leading to Peruggia's arrest at his hotel.
Peruggia was put on trial in Florence and, due to his claimed patriotic motives, received a lenient sentence, serving only seven months in jail. The theft, ironically, propelled the Mona Lisa to unprecedented global fame.
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