How did a theft make the Mona Lisa famous?
In 1911 crowds queued at the Louvre to stare at an empty wall where the Mona Lisa used to hang.
▶ Start the storyToday the Mona Lisa is considered the most famous painting in the world. It was not always so. Until the twentieth century it was one of many admired artworks, and in 1911 it was still not popular with the general public. What changed? Someone stole it.
On 21 August 1911, a Monday when the Louvre was closed, the painting vanished. Nobody noticed until the next day, when a painter arrived to work and found it missing. The Louvre shut for a week. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested, and Pablo Picasso was questioned; both were innocent.
The thief was Vincenzo Peruggia, a man who had worked at the Louvre and had helped build the painting's glass case. Police even visited his apartment, and a detective wrote his report leaning on the very table under which the painting was hidden.
Meanwhile, newspapers turned the mystery into a sensation, offering rewards and chasing hundreds of false leads. When the museum reopened, crowds came just to stare at the empty spot on the wall.
After two years, Peruggia tried to sell the painting to a dealer in Florence and was arrested. The Mona Lisa returned to the Louvre in January 1914, now a household name. The theft had done what a century on a museum wall had not: it made the whole world care about one painting.
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Recap
The Mona Lisa became a superstar by disappearing.
Surprising fact · A detective wrote his report leaning on the table under which the stolen painting was hidden.
Sources (3)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (31 claims) cites at least one of these.