The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 and that is how it became famous

On the morning of Tuesday, 22 August 1911, the air inside the Louvre was filled with the quiet anticipation typical of a weekday morning at the world's most famous museum. Louis Béroud, a painter known for his meticulous copies of masterworks, arrived at the Salon Carré, intent on replicating Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. As was common among artists of the era, Béroud had arranged to copy the painting, a practice that both honoured the original and honed his own craft. However, upon arrival, he found the space where the Mona Lisa should have hung conspicuously empty. Assuming the portrait had been moved for photography, a routine part of the museum's documentation efforts, Béroud went to lunch without alarm. By mid-afternoon, whispers turned to concern as nobody could locate the painting. The Louvre, usually a beacon of cultural treasure, closed for a week, and the Paris Prefecture mobilised sixty inspectors in response. On 23 August, the headline 'La Joconde a disparu' in Le Petit Parisien announced the news to an astonished public. Within a day, the story spread across Europe and beyond, marking the beginning of an era in which the Mona Lisa would transcend from a well-regarded portrait to the most famous painting on the planet.

What the Mona Lisa was, before the theft

Before the sensational disappearance, the Mona Lisa was certainly a painting of note, though not the unrivalled icon it would become. Leonardo da Vinci painted the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine cloth merchant Francesco del Giocondo, between 1503 and 1519. The painting’s relatively modest size — measuring 77 by 53 centimetres — belied its significance as a Leonardo. After Leonardo’s death in 1519, the painting remained in France, having been acquired by François I. It was displayed at Fontainebleau and later adorned the walls of Versailles before finding a permanent home in the Louvre after the French Revolution.

Despite its storied provenance, the Mona Lisa was one among many admired Renaissance masterpieces housed in the Louvre. Critics such as Théophile Gautier in 1858 and Walter Pater in 1869 had acknowledged its enigmatic allure, as did Sigmund Freud, who opined on it in 1910. Yet, it was not the most copied or celebrated artwork in the museum — that honour belonged to Veronese's 'Wedding at Cana'. The Mona Lisa was a well-regarded painting within a collection of illustrious works, but it had not yet achieved the singular status of an icon.

The thief

The man behind the audacious theft was Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian glazier who had once been employed at the Louvre. His familiarity with the museum's layout, coupled with his specific role as the glass fitter responsible for the Mona Lisa's protective case in 1909, gave him the advantage he needed. On Sunday, 20 August 1911, Peruggia concealed himself within the museum overnight. Disguised in a white smock — standard attire for museum workers — he emerged on the Monday morning cleaning day, a time when the public was not admitted.

With calculated nonchalance, Peruggia entered the Salon Carré, deftly removed the Mona Lisa along with its glass case from the wall, and made his way to a service staircase. There, he extracted the wooden panel from the case, wrapped it in his smock, and exited the museum through a side door. He transported the stolen painting to his apartment in Paris, where he concealed it in a wooden trunk for two years. This brazen theft, remarkably free of alarms, checkpoints, or inventory scrutiny, unfolded over the course of several hours and altered the course of art history.

The investigation, and the suspects it got wrong

The investigation into the Mona Lisa's disappearance was marred by errors and a lack of foresight that seem almost comical today. Detectives at the Paris Prefecture gathered a left thumbprint from the painting's glass case. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of their filing system, they could only search by right thumbprints, allowing Peruggia’s identity to go unnoticed despite his previous run-ins with the law. As the investigation floundered, suspicion fell on a host of unlikely figures, including prominent cultural icons of the time.

Among those questioned were the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the artist Pablo Picasso. Their brief detentions stemmed from Apollinaire's acquaintance with a Belgian who had pilfered minor artefacts from the Louvre and presented them to Picasso. The tenuous connection proved fruitless, and both men were released. Meanwhile, sensational stories filled the press: was the painting purloined by a German spy, an American magnate, or a fanatical collector? In the absence of tangible leads, the public flocked to the Louvre, where they queued to behold the empty space and the four nails where the Mona Lisa once hung.

How fame consolidated

During the two years the Mona Lisa remained missing, two significant developments bolstered its fame. Firstly, the photograph of the painting was reproduced with unprecedented frequency in newspapers worldwide. By some estimates, it was the most printed image between 1911 and 1913, making the face stolen by Peruggia recognizable to millions. Secondly, the image of the empty Salon Carré became a powerful symbol of loss. Newspapers like Le Figaro and Le Petit Journal, alongside international outlets such as the London Times and the New York Times, featured photographs of the vacant wall. These dual images — the painting's likeness and its absence — cemented its status as an artwork of unparalleled importance.

By the time the Mona Lisa was finally recovered, the international press had all but answered the rhetorical question regarding its status as the world's most famous painting. The theft had transformed it from one respected work among many to a global icon, catapulted to fame by the media frenzy it inspired. The painting's mythos was now as much a product of modern media as it was of Leonardo's mastery.

The recovery

The denouement of this art heist saga unfolded in late 1913 when Vincenzo Peruggia, driven by a skewed sense of nationalism, contacted Alfredo Geri, a Florentine antiques dealer. Peruggia offered to 'return' the painting to Italy, claiming patriotic motives. Geri, intrigued yet cautious, arranged to meet Peruggia at the Hotel Tripoli-Italia, now known as the Hotel La Gioconda. During the encounter, Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery, authenticated the painting, noting the seals on its back that confirmed its provenance.

On 11 December 1913, Peruggia was arrested, and the Mona Lisa was triumphantly exhibited in Florence, Rome, and Milan, drawing vast crowds eager to see the legendary painting. After a three-week Italian tour, it returned to Paris on 4 January 1914. Peruggia's defence hinged on his supposed patriotic intent, claiming the painting had been looted by Napoleon — an assertion historically inaccurate since François I had acquired it long before Napoleon's time. Nonetheless, his argument resonated with Italian sentiment, resulting in a relatively lenient prison sentence of seven months.

What the theft made possible

In the wake of its recovery, the Mona Lisa's allure only grew, making it one of the world's most visited artworks. Today, the painting attracts approximately nine million visitors annually, about a third of the Louvre's total foot traffic. The masterpiece is displayed behind bulletproof glass in a climate-controlled environment, viewable only for a fleeting fifteen seconds per visitor through the thronging crowds. Despite its popularity, the painting itself is in a precarious state: the poplar panel has warped, and a vertical crack near the top remains stable yet irreversible.

The Mona Lisa has also been the subject of various artistic appropriations, most notably Marcel Duchamp's 'L.H.O.O.Q.' (1919), which humorously defaced a postcard of the painting by adding a moustache, highlighting its mass recognisability. In 1963, Andy Warhol's series further enshrined the painting in the realm of pop culture. The painting has faced several attacks over the years, including a rock in 1956, acid in the same year, a wheelchair-bound protester in 1974, a thrown teacup in 2009, and a cake incident in 2022. Each time, its protective glass shielded it from harm.

Yet amidst all this, what remains visible is Leonardo’s work itself. The technical mastery is unchanged: the sfumato that softens her enigmatic smile, the architectural recession, and the deliberate asymmetry all continue to captivate. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these were the qualities that drew admiration. The painting stolen by Peruggia was a Leonardo; the painting recovered was the Mona Lisa. It had become two distinct entities sharing the same panel of poplar wood, an object redefined by history, media, and an audacious theft that forever altered its legacy.