🏛️ True story · Paris, 1911
The Mona Lisa theft (1911): the true story
One Monday in August 1911, the most famous painting in the world leaves the Louvre under a workman's arm. For two years, the police search everywhere, a famous poet goes to jail, Picasso is questioned… and the Mona Lisa sleeps under a bed, in Paris. Here is what we know about this case.
Tuesday, August 22, 1911: an empty wall
The painter Louis Béroud sets up in the Salon Carré to copy the Mona Lisa. In its place, he only finds four iron hooks. The guards first think the painting has gone to the photographer (the Braun studio), then they have to face the facts: the Mona Lisa was stolen the day before, Monday, August 21, when the museum was closed. The Louvre stays closed for a week.
An investigation going nowhere
Police prefect Louis Lépine puts Octave Hamard and sixty inspectors on the case. In a staircase, the abandoned frame and glass are found. Alphonse Bertillon lifts a thumbprint from it and takes the fingerprints of 257 Louvre employees: no result. The director, Théophile Homolle, has to resign. The Society of Friends of the Louvre offers a 25,000-franc reward, the magazine L'Illustration promises 50,000.
Apollinaire in jail, Picasso questioned
On August 29, 1911, a man called Géry Pieret, close to the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, sells Paris-Journal, for 250 francs, a statuette he says he stole from the Louvre. Years earlier, he had already offered stolen statuettes to Apollinaire, who had sold two of them on to Pablo Picasso. The two friends give them back at once, but Apollinaire's name leaks: on September 7, 1911, he is arrested, accused of complicity in the theft of the Mona Lisa, and spends a week in La Santé prison. Picasso is questioned. Both are cleared: they had nothing to do with the Mona Lisa.
The culprit: a Louvre glazier
Vincenzo Peruggia, born in 1881 in Italy, had worked at the Louvre for a glassworks, fitting protective glass on the paintings. On the day of the theft, he enters the museum wearing a white smock, like the staff, waits until he is alone in the Salon Carré, takes the painting down, removes it from its frame in a staircase and leaves with it. The police even come to his home on September 29, 1911: the inspector doesn't imagine that a humble workman could have pulled it off. For two years, the Mona Lisa stays hidden in his room, in the false bottom of a white wooden trunk, under his bed.
Florence, December 1913
On December 10, 1913, Peruggia contacts the Florentine antiques dealer Alfredo Geri, under the name “Leonardo V.”. Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery, authenticates the painting and alerts the police: Peruggia is arrested at his hotel (later renamed “Hotel Gioconda”). He says he wanted to give the painting back to Italy. Sentenced to one year and fifteen days in prison, he sees his sentence reduced to seven months.
After Florence and Rome, the Mona Lisa returns to the Louvre on January 4, 1914, in a specially chartered first-class carriage. A version published in 1932 credits a swindler, Eduardo de Valfierno, with the theft: it has never been proven.
Your turn to investigate
In Enquetix's famous case, you find the thief and clear the innocent, by pure deduction: twenty people (including Apollinaire, Picasso and the investigators of the time), ten places, from the Salon Carré to Florence, and the objects of the case. Each file shows what is documented 📚 and what the game added 🔎: a few made-up characters complete the grid, and they are marked.
🔎 Solve the Mona Lisa theft The other famous cases
Sources: Wikipedia (“Mona Lisa”, “Vincenzo Peruggia”, “Guillaume Apollinaire”); INHA, “Quand La Joconde rencontre Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”.