Vincenzo Peruggia stole "Mona Lisa" - August 21, 1911

On this day in 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia stole the "Mona Lisa" from the Louvre museum. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Welcome to This Day in History Class, where
we bring you a new tipbit from history every day.
Today is August nineteen. The day was August one, nineteen eleven.

(00:27):
An Italian thief named Vincenzo Perucha stole the Mona Lisa
from the Louver Museum in Paris. Peruchia moved to Paris
in nineteen o eight. In nineteen eleven, he worked at
the Louver as a handyman, fixing the glass in the displays.
Months before he would steal the Mona Lisa, a French

(00:47):
reporter stayed overnight at the Louver in a sarcophagus to
show how bad surveillance at the museum was. The Louver
did not have the best measures in place to protect
the artwork from theft. For instance, many of the paintings
were hanging and easy to take off of the wall.
By many accounts, Perucha, no stranger to the personnel in

(01:08):
the museum, entered the Loop on the evening of Sunday,
August nineteen eleven, wearing the same white smocks that the
Loop employees wore. He went to the gallery that held
the Mona Lisa and hid in a closet until the
museum closed. Then he took the Mona lisa out of
its frame and walked out with it under his smock.

(01:29):
On the one but Perucha himself said that he entered
the loop on the morning of Monday, Auguste grabbed the
Mona Lisa off the wall when nobody was in the
gallery and left with it under his smock. Either way,
he took the painting back to his apartment. The theft
went unnoticed for a whole day, since paintings were often

(01:53):
removed for a cleaning or for photos. But the day
after the theft, security guards realized that the art were
was missing and reported the theft to the police. Police
launched an investigation into the crime. The Mona Lisa's frame
was found in a stairwell, and the museum announced the
theft to the public. The museum closed for a week.

(02:16):
The press jumped on the story, which became international news.
Over the next two years. Fans of the Mona Lisa
and Loup visitors expressed their frustration with the theft of
the beloved artwork. Investigators question witnesses and stopped cars and
pedestrians for searches, but they weren't turning up any leads.

(02:38):
The newspaper Parish Journal, was offering a reward for information
about the theft, and a man named Joseph Jerry Peirey
went to its office with a small statue. He claimed
that he stole from the louver. He once worked for
the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had once called for the
louver to be burned down, and had several small statues

(03:00):
that were stolen from the louver. Pierre implicated a Pollinaire
and the Mona Lisa theft, but investigators did not think
that Apollinaire committed the crime alone, so they went after
Picasso too, who was a friend of Apollinaires and had
bought stolen statues from Pierre. But after their trial, Apollinaire

(03:20):
and Picasso were let off the hook. The investigation went cold,
though people continued to speculate on the paintings whereabouts. Some
claim they saw it in Brazil or a Japan. Some
said it was in the mansion of financier JP Morgan,
but Perugia had been keeping the Mona Lisa hidden. He

(03:42):
insisted that he just wanted to return it to Italy,
where it rightfully belonged as Napoleon had stolen it, though
it was not plundered under Napoleon. Whether or not he
was being truthful when he gave this justification for the
theft has been up for debate. In nineteen thirteen, he
tried to sell the painting using the pseudonym Leonardo Vincenzo.

(04:07):
He wrote to an art dealer in Florence named Alfredo Jerry,
saying he would bring the painting to Italy in exchange
for five hundred thousand lira. Jerry agreed, and Perugia took
the Mona Lisa to Italy. Jerry said that Ufizi Gallery
would authenticate the painting, but instead of buying the painting,

(04:28):
Jerry reported Peruchia to the police. He was arrested on
December eleventh in his hotel. The Ufizi Gallery displayed the
Mona Lisa for a couple of weeks before it was
returned to the Louver in January of nineteen fourteen. Peruchia
was convicted of theft in August of nineteen fourteen and

(04:48):
sentenced to just over a year in prison, though he
served less time than that. Art enthusiasts and critics showed
renewed interest in the Mona Lisa after its return. I'm
each chef Coote and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. We love it
if you left us a comment on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

(05:12):
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