December 17, 2025 • 47 mins
Sophia Bush is a history nerd. Ed and Sophia geek out with an oddly prescient historic whodunnit when they uncover the Heist of the Mona Lisa in 1911. Spoiler Alert: The Louvre never learns. And don't miss out this holiday season, look for Ed's New York Times Bestseller, SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups, wherever you get your books, or go to: www.snafu-book.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Here's the thing, and I bet you get this. When
you're an actor, people think you must be a good liar,
and I'm like, no, I memorize other people's words. I
can't come up with them on my own. I'm not
like a liar on the fly.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, I'm bad at that.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Hey, there, I met Helms and Welcome to SNAPO, the
show about history's greatest screw ups, or more specifically, the
show where I lead my brilliant guests through some of
the least brilliant moments in history. Today, I am joined
by someone who wears a lot of hats. This woman
is a powerhouse. You've seen her on the big screen,
(00:54):
the small screen, and in your podcast feed with the
stirring and thoughtful show in progress. She's an actress, an activist, producer,
and all around troublemaker for justice. Please welcome Sophia Bush.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I like that introduction, ed Helms. Can I It's like,
I want a little recording of that I can pull
out of my pocket when I go somewhere.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Well, we're recording is the podcast? This is sad feel
you can yeah, just feel free to use anytime you want.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I'm going to admit to you now I'll be stealing
your audio. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I was trying to think about I feel like I've
known you a long long time, but then I couldn't
place our the sort of origin of our connection. I
think it was represent us. Did we need to ed
represent us? Event only like way.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Back gosh, I think you're right, yeah, yeah, I didn't
know if it was do something or like I knew
we were in the mix on the let's inject hope
into working on society's problems because everyone always thinks that's
a drag, and it's like, no, it's actually pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Were just before we started recording, we were talking about
fly fishing, which I want to get back to. But
I just have a more sort of like meaty question
for you, because I really love how you have like
leveraged your platform for meaningful impact in the world.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Thanks.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I am a voter times up. Of course, you know
your your your climate work, and I'm just curious. You
know a lot of people with high profile kind of
dip into activism here and there. You've done much more
than dipping in, like you're you're fully engaged, and I'm
curious how those particular issues emerged for you. Was that.
(02:44):
Was it sort of strategic about where you could make
the most impact or was it more visceral like this,
These are things I feel in my gut, and I
got to speak up about this.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, it's definitely definitely option B and to choose your adventure.
I The irony is you're like, was it strategic? I
think it was probably the most unstrategic thing I could do.
For most of my career, my whole team has been like,
please shut up about the just can you like tone
it down? Could you just pick a charity, go to
the gala, like, write a check once in a while.
(03:18):
Why do you have to be so agitating to the system.
And I'm like, because the system needs to be agitated.
It's a shitty system. I the way I have come
to understand this thing about myself, and I think it's
been helpful. One of my best friends is a really
brilliant writer. His name's Jedediah Jenkins, and he said something
(03:38):
to me years ago. He said, we have a lot
of friends that work in creative spaces, and a lot
of our friends who are creatives are also concerned citizens.
You know, he goes, but You're I think you're the
only person I know who pretend who's a full time activist,
who pretends to be a full time actor, Like, I
feel like you kind of act just so you can
(03:58):
maintain the reach. And I used to think that was true.
And I think what I've realized over the last couple
of years is the spectrum of my experience as a
person needs both My work, whether it's like you know,
jumping in to do an improv show or a movie
is so sustaining to me and like my creative gas tank.
(04:24):
But the activism that is for everybody else, for community,
Like that's my calling. It's like like like painters can't
not paint, Yeah, writers can't not write. I cannot, even
despite great advice at times, keep my mouth shut about
things that I know are wrong and ways we could
(04:47):
be better, and how the whole point of being on
this planet is to like be neighbors with people. I
can't shut my mouth.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
No, that's incredible. I could just like go down this
rabbit hole for let me just ask you quickly and
let's let's keep this far short. What do you love
about fly fishing? I have an answer to this, but
what is your what is it you love about it?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Fly fishing for me is in that kind of cannon
of the American West. And to be clear, and like
I'm sure people will tell me I'm cringe or whatever.
I'm like like I am. I am a horse girl
at heart. Like I'm never happier than when I'm out
on horseback, out on empty you know, land or forests
(05:31):
or whatever. And fly fishing is that same kind of beautiful,
meditative experience in the land. It's so grounding to me.
And oh, I just I think it's magic totally. And
I have to say, like, the chakiest, gayest trip I've
ever taken was taking five of my girlfriends fly fishing
(05:53):
years ago, and I look back at the photos and
I'm like a clue. It was so cool and it's like,
I don't know, I am passionate about it, and I'm
also really passionate about getting more women out into the outdoors,
into spaces where there are often less of us, but
where we're we're actually quite good caster.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
All right, let's get into this snap. But we have
a really fun one today.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
What do you got for me? It's very exciting for me.
I'm nervous and excited all at the same time.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So this is a great, early and very literal example
of there is no such thing as bad press. We
are going to dig into the infamous Mona Lisa. Heist. Oh,
we begin our tale. In France, it's August twenty first,
(06:45):
nineteen eleven, a Tuesday, to be precise. A local artist
by the name of Louis Berude has decided to escape
the sweltering August Parisian heat and peruse a few of
his favorite works at a local museum. One of the
pieces he likes to check out was an oil painting
on a poplar wood panel that many lovingly called La Gioconda.
(07:09):
It utilized a stunning innovative technique called svumto a hazy effect,
blending colors and tones with subtle precision. But when Brud
arrived at Lagiaconda's normal hanging spot in the museum, she
wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
She was gone.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
She was gone. Now this may not feel like such
a big deal at first, but let's just be clear.
Lagiaconda is also known by her other name, the Mona Lisa.
We're talking about the Mona Lisa, and we actually have
a photo. Let's let's get up that photo of the
Mona Lisa. There she is hello, lady, Hello darling. Yes,
(07:51):
isn't she incredible?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
She really is quite stunning.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
She has achieved this legendary status in large, as we'll hear,
because of this famous heist, but she deserves it too,
and she's truly a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
She's so luminous.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Look at her.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
She looks like she swallowed a light bulb.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yes, let's just get a few facts out. Let's get
into the numbers of the Mona Lisa for a quick second.
Here's some stats. She's roughly thirty inches tall and twenty
one inches wide, which is not large. That's like the
average size of your Led Zeppelin poster in a college
dorm room.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
She's just like a little gal.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
He's right, she's a little gal.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
She's like a.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Concert poster you have framed in your kitchen.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
There you go. Mona Lisa's eyes famously follow the viewer.
Thanks to Da Vinci's mastery of perspective. Psychologists estimate this
smile appears to shift depending on where your eyes land.
A two thousand and five University of Amsterdam study found
eighty three percent of viewers interpret her as happy, nine
percent disgusted, six percent fearful, and two percent angry. I
(08:59):
love that.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I've never thought any of those things.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
So on that morning, Louis Beerude asked a guard where
has the Mona Lisa gone? And the guard wasn't particularly concerned.
He assumed it had just been taken out by a
staff photographer who was known to remove various paintings to
take pictures of them, and then sometimes forget to return
them right away. But as the hours ticked by and
(09:22):
the photographer swore he didn't have it, panic started to
set in. By mid afternoon, around three pm, the louver
quietly cleared out all the tourists and staff under the
pretense of a burst water pipe, not true. Meanwhile, they
called in about sixty detectives to comb through the museum's
endless corridors and hidden corners, which is no small feet
(09:45):
because the louver is huge. If you lay it out
all of its halls and galleries in a straight line,
it would be nearly nine miles, which is crazy. Have
you ever been to the Louver? Have you seen the
Mona Lisa in person? I have?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Can I actually tell you the coolest thing that's ever
happened to me? Of no, it's like of no doing
of my own so there are very There are only
five modern artists, like you know, our era of modernity
who have installations, permanent installations in the Louver. And one
(10:20):
of them happens to be a dear friend of mine
who is like an incredibly exceptional engineer and artist who
makes moving sculptures, and a few years ago when he
was selected to be the artist of our generation with
a permanent installation, I got to go on installation day
(10:45):
because I happened to be in France because I was
working and the Louver was closed.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
You've got a backstage pass to the louver.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yes, I got to be there for the day, you know,
and I was taking photographs and like so excited I
did for him and his family. And then the curator said,
would everyone, like, you know, quietly, would everyone like thirty
minutes to go see a few of our most famous exhibitions.
And they took us to see them on a lisa,
(11:14):
no ropes, no lines, no humans, and it was like
it actually made me emotional. I got a little weepy. Yeah,
it felt like a not even like a once in
a lifetime, it was like a once in a generation
kind of experience. And I was like, wow, I'm this
is like, maybe one of the coolest things that will
ever happen to me in my life.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
That's that is incredibly cool. I went to the Louver.
I don't know, it was probably seven or eight years ago.
I've been a few times, but the last visit I
just like, I'm going to go by myself. I love
going to museums by myself because half the time in
a museum you're either waiting for your friends or family
or you're looking for them or whatever. And this was
(11:56):
so nice. And then I remember getting I was like,
I gotta check in on Mona, right, I gotta just
give her a little hello. And I get in there
and it's the exact opposite of what you're saying. It
was so crowded and full of people in this huge hall,
and like we were saying before, it's small, like it's
(12:16):
not a big painting, and they're trying to shuffle people through.
But I just remember standing. I was probably like a
couple like one hundred feet back, and I just kind
of was like, Hey, Mona, good to see you. We're
gonna make sure we're in Paris at the same time
soon so that you can give me like a backstage tour.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I will absolutely ask if we can go back.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
All right, So back into the story. After an hour
of frantic searching, the detectives uncovered an empty glass frame
in a service stairwell. It was La Gioconda's frame. She
had seemingly vanished into thin air.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And just like that, bad news fairs.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, a massive international scandal erupted Mona's gentle smirk, peppered
the front pages of newspapers around the globe. And here's
the thing. At the time, the Mona Lisa was certainly
considered a masterpiece. Leonardo da Vinci really didn't was not prolific.
I mean, I think he had only like twenty five ish,
(13:17):
I don't know the exact number, but a small number
of paintings, and so this was it was definitely it
had incredible value and was a masterpiece. But it wasn't
that well known. It wasn't especially outside of France. But
almost overnight she just was thrust into the cultural spotlight
and became the most famous painting in the entire world.
(13:41):
You and I know a little bit about fame. Was
your transition into a famous person sudden or gradual? Has
it been? Was it difficult?
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Ah. The phrase that comes to mind is a baptism
by fire. Sure did it feel that way for you?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, well, there's certainly these moments where you're just like,
oh my god, like what just happened to reality? It's
it's like so different.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, I mean, certainly it was a shocking experience for
all of us who worked together on One Tree Hill,
which was my first like a regular gig on a
TV show. I think for me it was especially arresting
because I had gone to an all girls, like super
nerdy prep school. I know, you're shocked when I'm talking
(14:28):
about like global systems of oppression. You're like, gee, I
there were fifty five girls in my graduating class. Like,
I had no kind of experience with the world outside
of gorgeous academia. And I'm so grateful for it. My
(14:48):
passion for learning, my obsession with knowledge, the way I
was encouraged, especially in science, which so many girls are not.
I'm so grateful for it. But I did that. Then
I went to college for three years and was literally
a philanthropy chair like Nerd all the way through, kind
of trying to get my bearings. Sure, and to be clear,
(15:10):
I started working on my first TV show in two
thousand and three, So like this was the era that
literally we drove Britney spears to madness. Like the press
was not good to women in the early aughts. It
called everyone fat, it called everyone's sluts. It was just
it was horrible and to like put a hat on
a hat. Not only am I working on a teen
(15:32):
TV show which is high drama, all sexy, all the
things I'd literally never experienced, but I'm playing the like
captain of the cheer squad who's a vixen, And.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I'm like, what is a vixen?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Like I I like, I read the news for fun.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
What are we doing right?
Speaker 1 (15:50):
And so it was really weird for me because I
just didn't like, I look back at photos and I
feel like I can like see the goog behind my ears,
like I had just hatched and I didn't know anything.
I didn't know that a journalist could ask you a
question and you didn't have to answer it.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I now like to say, when I get asked a
question I don't want to answer, I just say pass,
which is really fun because reporters are like, wait, what
you can't pass? Next? Yeah? Just next question. They're like, yeah,
you can't pass, Like, yeah I can. I'm passing on
your question. Yeah, instead I'm doing, oh my god, use that,
by the way, pass it around.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I will say, like, given what that journey was, like,
I'm I'm also kind of really proud of myself. I'm
like the fact that I'm not like sitting in the
corner chewing my hair feels like a fucking miracle. So
I think we did good. I don't know, Amen, how
old were you when things really like exploded in your career.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
I was an adult, Like, I have very little to
complain about. I was an adult, but I also matured
very late as a human being. I was. I was
an adult by the numbers, but I was still very
much a child I was. I really appreciate that I
was twenty eight when I got on The Daily Show.
But that's kind of like what we called toy fame
because it was basic cable and it was like, and
(17:10):
you know, it grew while I was on the show,
but it was it wasn't you know. I wasn't getting
like chased by reporters or anything or tabloids. Yeah, but
then the office then sort of kicked things up a
major notch, and then of course the hangover. It was
just like, oh God, wow, here you go. Here we are.
(17:31):
This is like a whole new thing.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
But here's the thing. It never ceases being weird.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
No, it's always weird, because.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Like I am an adult and it's still so weird.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Let's take a trip back to the fifteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Hit me.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
One of the greatest Renaissance artists, Leonardo da Vinci, painted
the Mona Lisa between fifteen oh three and fifteen oh six.
Now why why did he paint this, this variouscial painting.
Well because wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo commissioned Da
Vinci to paint a portrait of his wife, Lisa Gerandini. Giocondo,
(18:12):
also the source of the painting's Italian nickname La Gioconda
or in French, la jaconde. The literal translation of that
is the joyful one or the happy woman, which is
a play on both her married name Giocondo and and
her expression in the painting. Francesco never actually paid for
(18:35):
the painting, so Da Vinci held on to it and
wound up taking it with him when he moved to
France in fifteen sixteen. At the request of King Francois
the first. This is not fact per se, but this
is generally the historian's consensus. It's kind of the closest
we can get. According to the Louvers records, King Francoise
(18:59):
was enamored with the work and officially purchased the Mona
Lisa from Da Vinci in fifteen eighteen. Da Vinci would
sadly pass away a short while later in fifteen nineteen.
He was sixty seven years old, which is like pretty
ripe for that time period. Yeah, so this is when
mon Lisa sort of started bouncing around. She would move
from French leader to French leader, allegedly sitting in King Francois,
(19:21):
King Francis's bathroom for a short stant, then onto the
fontine Bleau Palace. Later, Louis the fourteenth would place her
at the Palace of Versailles, and then Napoleon would keep
her in his own private bedchambers. How intimate apparently he
referred to her. He referred to her as the quote
(19:44):
Sphinx of the occident. I think this is really evidence
of the spell that this painting can cast on people.
That she wasn't just hung in a hall somewhere she
was like in private quarters for people intimate. Mona Lisa
was established as part of the French Royal collection eventually
(20:04):
and was transferred to the Louver.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Accordingly, question, yeah, question, professor, Yeah, who transferred her to
the French collection?
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Like there was a moment. That's a great question, and
I don't know the precise answer, but there was a
moment where the royal collection was in the late seventeen hundreds,
the Royal collection was made public. It was made to
be sort of owned by the French people, and that's
(20:36):
when a lot of that art made it into the Louver,
which is Yeah, So the Louver first began showing the
Mona Lisa on public display in eighteen oh four. Fast
forward about a century and the Mona Lisa belonged to
the people of France, sitting comfortably in the salon carre
of the Louver along with various other masterpieces. This is
(21:00):
before it was it got its own sort of gallery.
But one former employee of the Louver believed that maybe
she belonged elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Don't done, Yeah, you need the law and order like
bumpo done.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Now we get into the height. So we're back in
nineteen eleven, and the heist of the twentieth century was
all like Gray Poupon. So who took the Mona Lisa? Well?
Was it an international crime syndicate? Was it Napoleon's ghost
(21:36):
desperate for some new bedroom decorps? Was it a time
traveling banksy? Perhaps No, it is none of the above. No, no,
but yeah, and now there is a swarm of detectives,
sixty some odd detectives, following a myriad of leads, and
all the while she is actually actually just a few
blocks over from the Louver, resting in a trunk with
(21:59):
a fall bottom, owned by a man named Vincenzo Perugia.
I think we have a photo of Vincenzo here. Let's
take a look at this man.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Look at him.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
A literal mustache twirl, Yeah, yeah, a little bit of
a yeah. I mean, he's he's he's got that energy.
He's Italian. He's an Italian immigrant and living in Paris,
something of a handyman, and he had been employed at
the Louver.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
There are various reports of how the act of the
heist actually went down, but all told, it was quite seamless.
Perugia had been employed by the louver and and in fact,
in one of his duties, he had helped construct the
glass case that held the Mona Lisa, so he knew
exactly how it sort of came together and came apart,
(22:54):
and precisely how to remove her quite carefully. Now interesting
side note, he apparently suffered a lot of discrimination as
an Italian immigrant in France and had a bit of
a grudge against French society, which he will claim played
into his actions. And as we'll learn later, on Monday
(23:17):
August twenty first, nineteen eleven, Perugia entered the museum at
a time when it was only open to staff mondays
were cleaning days. Now some reports say he actually hid
the night before in a supply closet and then e
merged on that Monday morning. In any case, he was
wearing a workman's smock, so kind of, you know, fit
in with the staff. He snuck into the hall removed
(23:41):
the painting in this glass case, which at that time
they weren't they were worried about, I guess about graffiti
and things. So it did have a glass case. It's
nothing like the bulletproof thing it's behind now, but and
it weighed, it was quite heavy, but he got it
off the wall. Other reports say he had two accomplices.
(24:02):
There's different, different details floating around, but managed to get
this bulky glass case into a stairwell where he was
able to open the case and pull out just the painting,
this piece of poplar with some oil paint on it,
and then he just was able to stroll out onto
(24:23):
the Rue de Revoulie. Yes, another cool, sort of fun detail.
He actually found himself locked in to the louver because
it was a working day. They weren't allowing you know,
the public in on this on this Monday, and he
(24:44):
wasn't able to get out the way he thought. But
then a plumber, a louve like staff plumber walked up
and was like, no problem, I'll help you out. Here
you go, and like helped him through the door. So
off he goes, and he's carrying the painting just down
the street under his smock apparently.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Can you imagine.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, no, it's it's nuts. It's nuts. The anxiety I
feel like what makes me not a criminal mastermind is
like I as soon as I even start to think
about that, I just start sweating.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
By the way I am, it is so far in
the degree of panic for me, even when I know
I've done nothing wrong. Exactly, if you were like, hey, hey,
I need to talk to you later, I'd be like,
what have I done? What don't I remember?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
And then you're what I maybe do and not the
same way? What is what? What childhood trauma led us
into this? It's so annoying, I mean, and like this,
And it's also very interesting this that that fear of
being perceived as guilty can can actually make you act
more guilty. Uh and and this is a this will
(25:57):
this is this will emerge in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And here's the thing. And I bet you get this.
When you're an actor, people think you must be a
good liar, and I'm like, no, I memorize other people's words.
I can't come up with them on my own. I'm
not like a liar on the Flygh.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, I'm bad at that.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Exactly did he get caught because he was a panicky
little potato?
Speaker 3 (26:16):
No? No, no, no he didn't. But it gets interesting.
So local police concluded that they just eventually, it took
like twenty four hours talking to the photographer and you know,
looking everywhere, they finally realized like this thing is gone
like it's stolen, and word spread fast news reports began
to extend beyond Paris, and in short order it just
(26:38):
became a global scandal, like how could such a prominent
museum lose one of their masterpieces. A French publication called
lilos Stracion wrote quote, what audacious criminal, what mystifier? What
maniac collector? What insane lover has committed this abduction?
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Insane lover?
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Yes? Like a French publication goes right to like he
must love this painting. He's an insane lover. Or he's
doing it for his lover's love.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
He is obsessed with her, he loves his mona Lisa.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Oh it's so good, it's so French. I love it.
The New York Times Correspondent posted an article claiming offers
of five million dollars for its return. Now that's it's
unclear if those were actually real, but that's more than
one hundred and sixty nine million dollars in today's money.
Oh my god, it's not feeling worth it.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I mean, if you paid me one hundred and sixty
nine million dollars, would I try to steal something for someone?
But I wouldn't be able to pull it off. So no,
I can. I can ask myself the question, but I
already know even in theory, I'm going to fail.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Oh boy. The art curator of the louver said that
he had a gut feeling that it was stolen, so
that the would attempt to copy it, but he wasn't.
He wasn't gonna let that or even like return a
copy and hold on to the original. But he would
(28:08):
not let that fly because quote, I studied the picture
for years, mounted and unmounted. I know every minor detail
of it, and I would recognize a copy, however perfect
after five minutes observation. Okay, so that's a quote so
obviously quite cocky about his painting analysis skills, but but
(28:30):
it's actually true. Because he was an expert as as
the curator of the loop, he knew a lot about
what's called crack colure, which is the tiny little cracks
and fissures that form over time. And as an oil
painting ages, the Mona Lisa upclose is quite cracked like
it is, it's covered in sort of checking and cracking,
(28:54):
and that is that is that becomes something of a
DNA signature or a fingerprint for a painting because that's
virtually impossible to duplicate. You can duplicate the cracking, but
to match cracking, Yeah, exactly, it's not gonna It's just
gonna be impossible. So naturally, lots of odd theories and
false accusations are flying all around. One claimed the JP Morgan,
(29:17):
the American banker, had the picture stolen so that he
could keep it in his private collection. Yeah. A renowned
poet by the name of Guillame Aoignier became a suspect.
He was forgive my French accent, by the way, I'm
very like, I'm kind of cocky about it, but I
know it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
It's not terrible.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
So apore was one of the rare folks who apparently
was not a fan of the painting, and at one
point had joked about burning the louver down. But he
was like he was kind of a sort of counterculture poet, bohemian,
just in the like almost like a comic. Sure. Yeah,
(29:58):
and he was well known and he was something of
celebrity in the in the in French sort of artistic
culture at the time. A Poigniere's trail led to a
shocking second suspect, Pablo Picasso. What yes, isn't this wild?
They thought that Picasso might have stolen the Mona Lisa
(30:19):
shut up? For what? Well, the link between a poigniere
and Picasso was this shady buddy that they had, who
had who had stolen Iberian busts for them from the Louver,
like they did have stolen property from the louver.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
We why why?
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Why? Why?
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Because they wanted to learn to copy them or just
because they thought it was like funny and they were
a bunch of crazy drunks.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
I don't know the I don't know the truth of
that answer, but I do know, well, could you not know? Well,
Picasso did also paint one of the busts, so it
was for artistic reasons presumably, but like, also, why a
stolen thing? Anyway? It's so badass that Picasso had a
stolen bust from the.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Loop, it really is. It makes me like him more.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Police investigated them, and this is where that guilty thing
it gets in, because I read a thing about how
they were questioned and Picasso was so terrified and overwhelmed
with fear that that he was sobbing and me yeah,
(31:25):
and and and acting so guilty that they were just like, uh,
you couldn't have done this.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
You're not.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
You're too much of a whimp. You're not. You don't
have the sort of like fortitude to pull something like
this off. But it is a wild connection. Anyway, After
considerable questioning, both Are and Pablo Picasso were were let
go and uh and they were not suspects any longer.
Another two years goes by Sophia Bush. They don't, they
(31:53):
don't find it. Two years, two years, and they're starting
to think, oh my god, maybe the Mona Lisa is
gone forever. Until in December of nineteen thirteen, a Florentine
art and antiquities dealer Alfredo Jeri, Now I do have
now my Italian accident is horrific, but I'm just gonna
(32:13):
I'm diving all in, Alfredo Jeri. I also like to
do it like this. I put on this voice for
a Brando. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
He received an odd correspondence from a man calling himself,
wait for it, Leonard or Leonardo perhaps yeah, calling himself Leonardo.
This mystery man claimed he had stolen the Mona Lisa
and wanted to return it to its birthplace, Italy. Wow,
so he's now claiming that he stole it for patriotic reasons.
(32:49):
Jari was suspicious but intrigued. He agreed to meet with
this mysterious Leonard at the Tripoli Italia Hotel in Florence,
and brought along with him the Uffizi Gallery director Giovanni Polgi. Okay,
the Offizi Gallery obviously being like the louver of Italy.
(33:10):
And this guy knows his ship, let's put it that way.
So the three men arranged to meet in Leonard's hotel room,
where a wooden trunk was waiting Leonyard removed a false
bottom from the trunk, and they're wrapped in a red
silk cloth. Was the Mona lis is the jacund one?
(33:35):
Pretty dramatic reveal, right, a red silken cloth.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
This is really giving Thomas Crown affair?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yes right, and I like it. I do too. So
are Italian art dealers. They're no fools. They they are
like pretty sure this is the real deal, and they
play it very cool. They confirm its authenticity, and Jeri
and Polgi pretended to agree to this to Leonard's asking
(34:03):
price of one hundred thousand dollars, and they sort of
kept him on the hook. Now that's one hundred thousand
dollars at that time is three million dollars to day.
It's not too shabby. And this is the primary thing
that sort of throws his patriotic motives into question. Right,
He's like, he's also kind of asking for a big
paycheck here.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Right, He's like, no, I'm doing it for Italy, but
also for my retirement.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
He's like my Italian bride, but also not give me
a little cheddar. Right, that's like a little Mozarella with
this perhaps, and that tracks for a thief, Yeah, exactly.
So they told Leonard that they needed to take the
painting to the Afizi gallery to further confirm that it
was the.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Real thing before they paid him.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah. But then, of course they immediately alerted the police
and Perugia was arrested the next day on December eleventh,
nineteen thirteen, in his hotel room. Boom caught in the
at Perugia. Yeah, they got him, they snagged.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Him, They got him.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Wait, but so then what happened? What happened to the
handyman from the Louver and everybody else involved?
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Well, Perugia is that handyman?
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Oh he is the handyman? Yes? Oh gosh, sorry, I
don't know why.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
He held on to it for years.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
I'm wondering, do you think that it was always his
plan to, you know, do it for the home country,
or do you do you think he wanted to like
see if he could and then it was such a
scandal that he kept it in a trunk and was.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Like, oh shit, well what do I do?
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Or maybe it was a little mixed up.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
It's a bit of columns A, B, and C here,
because you know, it was there is evidence that that
he did suffer discrimination and had a grudge against sort
of French society culture, and also that that this painting
being such an icon of Italian culture and Italian uh
sort of sort of brilliance and excellence in the arts,
(36:01):
his having a sort of it would it would clock
that he would then see that as a as a
as a sort of righteous target to take and and
as almost as like a punishment to the French. That
this is my speculation. I don't know how much evidence
there is of this, but but I think, uh it,
(36:21):
but this sort of tracks in my mind. And and
then realizing after a couple of years that like he's
sitting on a seriously hot potato that he can't sell
or like there's no one that that will fence the
Mona Lisa after especially after like worldwide headlines. And then
he's like, Okay, now I have to sort of create
this narrative that I can sell it to these Italians, uh,
for the for the right reasons, and maybe they'll like
(36:45):
buy it and let me sort of be stay anonymous.
But of course they're like, no, you're busted, like you.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, they're like, we're not stupid. We can't hang this
in our museum and be like.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Yeah, oh look what we found. We just floated down
the river.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
But now that it's here, we're not gonna we're not
sending it back.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
It doesn't work like exactly all right, So Perusia, Uh,
this is this is really cool. Perusia also said that
over time he felt he quote fell victim to her
smile and feasted my eyes on my treasure every evening.
I fell in love with her, he said, which is uh,
(37:24):
which is more sort of evidence of her, her spell,
her her sort of mystical powers. But but yeah, wow,
she was a hot she was a hot. Yeah, she
was a hot hot to Molly. There After, of course
(37:44):
this was all discovered and he was arrested and and
uh found guilty. It was returned to France, and we
have a photo of It's of of her giddy homecoming
at the Louver. Let's see. Wow, obviously a huge party.
You can see how everyone's dancing with reckless abandon and glee. Yes,
I love how the guy holding her looks like her legs.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, a little bit of something.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
You can kind of see. You can't see the guy's
face who's actually holding the painting, but you can see
his legs.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
You can see his little top hat.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Yeah, right, right, right, Yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Almost feels like he'd pop through the frame where it
not so valuable.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
I wish we could go back to this, this style.
I love all the mustaches and top hats and trench coats.
Although I must say they do look hot, like I mean,
they look hot as in like like spicy hot, but
they also look like they're probably sweating under all that wool.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah. It's also one of those things like I don't
know about you, but we have air conditioning and like
we can wear linen in the summer now.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
I look at pictures like this and I think, like, oh,
I know why they used to have fainting couches.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yeah, there you go, it makes sense, you go. I
love that, you know. So right upon Mona Lisa's return
to France, everyone wanted to get an eye on this
new mythical painting. Over one hundred twenty thousand people came
to see her in just two days. Da Vinci's painting
had exploded into the cultural stratosphere. All the press and
news coverage took the painting to the next level. So
(39:16):
what happened to our man Vincenzo Perugia, the art thief. Well,
he was tried in Italy, where he again he claimed
that he was stealing the painting for patriotic reasons. He
became something of a folk hero and he was sentenced
to a year in prison, but he wound up only
serving about seven months before this is right before World
(39:39):
War One, which then broke out, and he left prison,
joined the army, fought for Italy, and then wound up
dying in France in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Oh gie.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
As for La Gioconda, her smile still smites eight million
visitors per year. Eight million visitors go and see the
Monaliese ever year, which is that's insane and She's so
popular that she has her own mailbox at the Louver
because she gets so much direct fan mail.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
What an odd thing to write a letter to a painting. Yeah, interesting,
I guess when I when I hear you say eight
million people a year ago to France to visit her,
I think, Look, the guy was clearly misguided and obviously
a little fantastical in his storytelling about his motivations. But
that's a whole lot of money France has made on
(40:33):
this painting and not Italy.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
You're raising a really interesting, uh, really interesting question that
that I think this story brings up. There are a
couple of I think, kind of high altitude takeaways from
this story. One is is just how the narrative around
the Mona Lisa, like her theft, the scandal, the recovery,
(40:56):
it just it became as important and exciting as the painting.
It's and it's it's a kind of a reflection of
how the story of something can almost matter more than
just the reality of it, right. I mean, that's certainly true.
I think for celebrities, like we celebrities cultivate stories and
(41:17):
kind of narratives, we often find out like, oh, that
person was not what we thought. I don't just mean celebrities,
I mean like public figures, politicians, whoever.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
They'll kind of cast you as a character correct rather
than highlight your reality. And the interesting thing is, I
think when you become a media figure, if that if
there is a character that is not accurate or not
honoring the nuance of your life, but it's profitable to others,
it's the one that will.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Prevail, and that's sucks.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
And so I think there's something really interesting about I
don't know, it's crazy to me that this woman, the
Mona Lisa, seems to be a person in our cultural lexicon.
I mean she gets fan mail, yeah, and she's a painting.
There's there's a there's something wild about you.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
She's she's magical. In my view, it sort of took
this heist for people to truly see like how sort
of mystical and powerful she is. And obviously Leonardo da
Vinci is such a legend for so many reasons as
a scientist and a painter and all these things, and
and this is this, this work is truly special.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It almost strikes me like it's momentum, circular momentum. Something
started it, and I would wager that to your point
at the top of the episode, you know, the haze,
the kind of the colors, the way her eyes follow you,
things that had never been done before were very arresting
(42:52):
for people. But then people like to feel like they're
in on something, so when they hear that this thing
is very arresting, then they say, oh, I was so
arrested by this painting, and then the whole thing just grows.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah, this story also very much raises the very real
question about repatriation. Of course, Perugia was I think, claiming
that he was repatriating the Mona Lisa for sort of
cynical reasons to maybe help exonerate himself, although there probably
(43:28):
was also some national pride that wrapped up in him
or resentment for French culture. But the idea of returning
cultural treasures to their rightful home is a very real one,
and it's something that has bubbled up more and more,
and I think just for example, the Netherlands recently returned
(43:52):
one hundred and nineteen bronzes to Nigeria which had been
looted in the nineteenth century, and you know, they're finally
back where they belong after one hundred and thirty years.
To me, that's inspiring proof that even old injustices can
be addressed through yes, through dialogue. It takes an honest
(44:12):
accounting of history to kind of get to these places.
A lot of museums are now experimenting with shared custody
of items, rotating collections, so that people around the world
can access all of this history, and that reminds me
of like, you know, when we're kids, our parents being like,
(44:32):
you have to share those toys, right, to share those books, right,
everybody gets a turn. And it strikes me that whether
we're talking about art or stories or history itself, the
more we treat it as something to be passed around
and experienced by everyone, the richer it all becomes. I
don't know, I think that's something that's some hopeful shit.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah it is. It's almost like learning about other cultures
is cool, gett a get here.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yeah, it's almost it's almost like learning about history is cool.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Doesn't make me cool pretty, I don't know, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
I think so, Sophia Bush, you are extremely cool. This
has been so so hard cool. I feel like I
run into you every like, I don't know, it's like
a year a couple of years ago by I get
that and then I get the high five you somewhere,
and this has been like such a fun hang and
I'm so grateful that you came on.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Thanks in a world that is odd to know you
have like fellow history nerds out there. Feels good.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Yeah we got homies, Yeah we do. Snapoo is a
production of iHeart Podcasts and Snapoo Media, a partnership between
Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post
production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me
Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim Whitney, Donaldson,
(46:06):
and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino
and Tory Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical
direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is
Brett Harris. Logo and branding by The Collected Works. Legal
review from Dan Welsh, Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special
(46:27):
thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein and everyone
at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman, Nikki Etoor,
Nathan O'towski and Alex Corral. While I have you don't
forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafoo,
The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available
(46:47):
now from any book retailer. Just go to Snaffoo dashbook
dot com. Thanks for listening, and see you next week.
Here's the thing, and I bet you get this. When
you're an actor, people think you must be a good liar,
and I'm like, no, I memorize other people's words. I
can't come up with them on my own. I'm not
like a liar on the fly.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, I'm bad at that.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Hey, there, I met Helms and Welcome to SNAPO, the
show about history's greatest screw ups, or more specifically, the
show where I lead my brilliant guests through some of
the least brilliant moments in history. Today, I am joined
by someone who wears a lot of hats. This woman
is a powerhouse. You've seen her on the big screen,
(00:54):
the small screen, and in your podcast feed with the
stirring and thoughtful show in progress. She's an actress, an activist, producer,
and all around troublemaker for justice. Please welcome Sophia Bush.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I like that introduction, ed Helms. Can I It's like,
I want a little recording of that I can pull
out of my pocket when I go somewhere.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Well, we're recording is the podcast? This is sad feel
you can yeah, just feel free to use anytime you want.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I'm going to admit to you now I'll be stealing
your audio. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I was trying to think about I feel like I've
known you a long long time, but then I couldn't
place our the sort of origin of our connection. I
think it was represent us. Did we need to ed
represent us? Event only like way.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Back gosh, I think you're right, yeah, yeah, I didn't
know if it was do something or like I knew
we were in the mix on the let's inject hope
into working on society's problems because everyone always thinks that's
a drag, and it's like, no, it's actually pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Were just before we started recording, we were talking about
fly fishing, which I want to get back to. But
I just have a more sort of like meaty question
for you, because I really love how you have like
leveraged your platform for meaningful impact in the world.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Thanks.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I am a voter times up. Of course, you know
your your your climate work, and I'm just curious. You
know a lot of people with high profile kind of
dip into activism here and there. You've done much more
than dipping in, like you're you're fully engaged, and I'm
curious how those particular issues emerged for you. Was that.
(02:44):
Was it sort of strategic about where you could make
the most impact or was it more visceral like this,
These are things I feel in my gut, and I
got to speak up about this.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, it's definitely definitely option B and to choose your adventure.
I The irony is you're like, was it strategic? I
think it was probably the most unstrategic thing I could do.
For most of my career, my whole team has been like,
please shut up about the just can you like tone
it down? Could you just pick a charity, go to
the gala, like, write a check once in a while.
(03:18):
Why do you have to be so agitating to the system.
And I'm like, because the system needs to be agitated.
It's a shitty system. I the way I have come
to understand this thing about myself, and I think it's
been helpful. One of my best friends is a really
brilliant writer. His name's Jedediah Jenkins, and he said something
(03:38):
to me years ago. He said, we have a lot
of friends that work in creative spaces, and a lot
of our friends who are creatives are also concerned citizens.
You know, he goes, but You're I think you're the
only person I know who pretend who's a full time activist,
who pretends to be a full time actor, Like, I
feel like you kind of act just so you can
(03:58):
maintain the reach. And I used to think that was true.
And I think what I've realized over the last couple
of years is the spectrum of my experience as a
person needs both My work, whether it's like you know,
jumping in to do an improv show or a movie
is so sustaining to me and like my creative gas tank.
(04:24):
But the activism that is for everybody else, for community,
Like that's my calling. It's like like like painters can't
not paint, Yeah, writers can't not write. I cannot, even
despite great advice at times, keep my mouth shut about
things that I know are wrong and ways we could
(04:47):
be better, and how the whole point of being on
this planet is to like be neighbors with people. I
can't shut my mouth.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
No, that's incredible. I could just like go down this
rabbit hole for let me just ask you quickly and
let's let's keep this far short. What do you love
about fly fishing? I have an answer to this, but
what is your what is it you love about it?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Fly fishing for me is in that kind of cannon
of the American West. And to be clear, and like
I'm sure people will tell me I'm cringe or whatever.
I'm like like I am. I am a horse girl
at heart. Like I'm never happier than when I'm out
on horseback, out on empty you know, land or forests
(05:31):
or whatever. And fly fishing is that same kind of beautiful,
meditative experience in the land. It's so grounding to me.
And oh, I just I think it's magic totally. And
I have to say, like, the chakiest, gayest trip I've
ever taken was taking five of my girlfriends fly fishing
(05:53):
years ago, and I look back at the photos and
I'm like a clue. It was so cool and it's like,
I don't know, I am passionate about it, and I'm
also really passionate about getting more women out into the outdoors,
into spaces where there are often less of us, but
where we're we're actually quite good caster.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
All right, let's get into this snap. But we have
a really fun one today.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
What do you got for me? It's very exciting for me.
I'm nervous and excited all at the same time.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So this is a great, early and very literal example
of there is no such thing as bad press. We
are going to dig into the infamous Mona Lisa. Heist. Oh,
we begin our tale. In France, it's August twenty first,
(06:45):
nineteen eleven, a Tuesday, to be precise. A local artist
by the name of Louis Berude has decided to escape
the sweltering August Parisian heat and peruse a few of
his favorite works at a local museum. One of the
pieces he likes to check out was an oil painting
on a poplar wood panel that many lovingly called La Gioconda.
(07:09):
It utilized a stunning innovative technique called svumto a hazy effect,
blending colors and tones with subtle precision. But when Brud
arrived at Lagiaconda's normal hanging spot in the museum, she
wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
She was gone.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
She was gone. Now this may not feel like such
a big deal at first, but let's just be clear.
Lagiaconda is also known by her other name, the Mona Lisa.
We're talking about the Mona Lisa, and we actually have
a photo. Let's let's get up that photo of the
Mona Lisa. There she is hello, lady, Hello darling. Yes,
(07:51):
isn't she incredible?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
She really is quite stunning.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
She has achieved this legendary status in large, as we'll hear,
because of this famous heist, but she deserves it too,
and she's truly a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
She's so luminous.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Look at her.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
She looks like she swallowed a light bulb.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yes, let's just get a few facts out. Let's get
into the numbers of the Mona Lisa for a quick second.
Here's some stats. She's roughly thirty inches tall and twenty
one inches wide, which is not large. That's like the
average size of your Led Zeppelin poster in a college
dorm room.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
She's just like a little gal.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
He's right, she's a little gal.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
She's like a.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Concert poster you have framed in your kitchen.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
There you go. Mona Lisa's eyes famously follow the viewer.
Thanks to Da Vinci's mastery of perspective. Psychologists estimate this
smile appears to shift depending on where your eyes land.
A two thousand and five University of Amsterdam study found
eighty three percent of viewers interpret her as happy, nine
percent disgusted, six percent fearful, and two percent angry. I
(08:59):
love that.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I've never thought any of those things.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
So on that morning, Louis Beerude asked a guard where
has the Mona Lisa gone? And the guard wasn't particularly concerned.
He assumed it had just been taken out by a
staff photographer who was known to remove various paintings to
take pictures of them, and then sometimes forget to return
them right away. But as the hours ticked by and
(09:22):
the photographer swore he didn't have it, panic started to
set in. By mid afternoon, around three pm, the louver
quietly cleared out all the tourists and staff under the
pretense of a burst water pipe, not true. Meanwhile, they
called in about sixty detectives to comb through the museum's
endless corridors and hidden corners, which is no small feet
(09:45):
because the louver is huge. If you lay it out
all of its halls and galleries in a straight line,
it would be nearly nine miles, which is crazy. Have
you ever been to the Louver? Have you seen the
Mona Lisa in person? I have?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Can I actually tell you the coolest thing that's ever
happened to me? Of no, it's like of no doing
of my own so there are very There are only
five modern artists, like you know, our era of modernity
who have installations, permanent installations in the Louver. And one
(10:20):
of them happens to be a dear friend of mine
who is like an incredibly exceptional engineer and artist who
makes moving sculptures, and a few years ago when he
was selected to be the artist of our generation with
a permanent installation, I got to go on installation day
(10:45):
because I happened to be in France because I was
working and the Louver was closed.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
You've got a backstage pass to the louver.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yes, I got to be there for the day, you know,
and I was taking photographs and like so excited I
did for him and his family. And then the curator said,
would everyone, like, you know, quietly, would everyone like thirty
minutes to go see a few of our most famous exhibitions.
And they took us to see them on a lisa,
(11:14):
no ropes, no lines, no humans, and it was like
it actually made me emotional. I got a little weepy. Yeah,
it felt like a not even like a once in
a lifetime, it was like a once in a generation
kind of experience. And I was like, wow, I'm this
is like, maybe one of the coolest things that will
ever happen to me in my life.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
That's that is incredibly cool. I went to the Louver.
I don't know, it was probably seven or eight years ago.
I've been a few times, but the last visit I
just like, I'm going to go by myself. I love
going to museums by myself because half the time in
a museum you're either waiting for your friends or family
or you're looking for them or whatever. And this was
(11:56):
so nice. And then I remember getting I was like,
I gotta check in on Mona, right, I gotta just
give her a little hello. And I get in there
and it's the exact opposite of what you're saying. It
was so crowded and full of people in this huge hall,
and like we were saying before, it's small, like it's
(12:16):
not a big painting, and they're trying to shuffle people through.
But I just remember standing. I was probably like a
couple like one hundred feet back, and I just kind
of was like, Hey, Mona, good to see you. We're
gonna make sure we're in Paris at the same time
soon so that you can give me like a backstage tour.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I will absolutely ask if we can go back.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
All right, So back into the story. After an hour
of frantic searching, the detectives uncovered an empty glass frame
in a service stairwell. It was La Gioconda's frame. She
had seemingly vanished into thin air.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And just like that, bad news fairs.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, a massive international scandal erupted Mona's gentle smirk, peppered
the front pages of newspapers around the globe. And here's
the thing. At the time, the Mona Lisa was certainly
considered a masterpiece. Leonardo da Vinci really didn't was not prolific.
I mean, I think he had only like twenty five ish,
(13:17):
I don't know the exact number, but a small number
of paintings, and so this was it was definitely it
had incredible value and was a masterpiece. But it wasn't
that well known. It wasn't especially outside of France. But
almost overnight she just was thrust into the cultural spotlight
and became the most famous painting in the entire world.
(13:41):
You and I know a little bit about fame. Was
your transition into a famous person sudden or gradual? Has
it been? Was it difficult?
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Ah. The phrase that comes to mind is a baptism
by fire. Sure did it feel that way for you?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, well, there's certainly these moments where you're just like,
oh my god, like what just happened to reality? It's
it's like so different.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, I mean, certainly it was a shocking experience for
all of us who worked together on One Tree Hill,
which was my first like a regular gig on a
TV show. I think for me it was especially arresting
because I had gone to an all girls, like super
nerdy prep school. I know, you're shocked when I'm talking
(14:28):
about like global systems of oppression. You're like, gee, I
there were fifty five girls in my graduating class. Like,
I had no kind of experience with the world outside
of gorgeous academia. And I'm so grateful for it. My
(14:48):
passion for learning, my obsession with knowledge, the way I
was encouraged, especially in science, which so many girls are not.
I'm so grateful for it. But I did that. Then
I went to college for three years and was literally
a philanthropy chair like Nerd all the way through, kind
of trying to get my bearings. Sure, and to be clear,
(15:10):
I started working on my first TV show in two
thousand and three, So like this was the era that
literally we drove Britney spears to madness. Like the press
was not good to women in the early aughts. It
called everyone fat, it called everyone's sluts. It was just
it was horrible and to like put a hat on
a hat. Not only am I working on a teen
(15:32):
TV show which is high drama, all sexy, all the
things I'd literally never experienced, but I'm playing the like
captain of the cheer squad who's a vixen, And.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I'm like, what is a vixen?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Like I I like, I read the news for fun.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
What are we doing right?
Speaker 1 (15:50):
And so it was really weird for me because I
just didn't like, I look back at photos and I
feel like I can like see the goog behind my ears,
like I had just hatched and I didn't know anything.
I didn't know that a journalist could ask you a
question and you didn't have to answer it.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I now like to say, when I get asked a
question I don't want to answer, I just say pass,
which is really fun because reporters are like, wait, what
you can't pass? Next? Yeah? Just next question. They're like, yeah,
you can't pass, Like, yeah I can. I'm passing on
your question. Yeah, instead I'm doing, oh my god, use that,
by the way, pass it around.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I will say, like, given what that journey was, like,
I'm I'm also kind of really proud of myself. I'm
like the fact that I'm not like sitting in the
corner chewing my hair feels like a fucking miracle. So
I think we did good. I don't know, Amen, how
old were you when things really like exploded in your career.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
I was an adult, Like, I have very little to
complain about. I was an adult, but I also matured
very late as a human being. I was. I was
an adult by the numbers, but I was still very
much a child I was. I really appreciate that I
was twenty eight when I got on The Daily Show.
But that's kind of like what we called toy fame
because it was basic cable and it was like, and
(17:10):
you know, it grew while I was on the show,
but it was it wasn't you know. I wasn't getting
like chased by reporters or anything or tabloids. Yeah, but
then the office then sort of kicked things up a
major notch, and then of course the hangover. It was
just like, oh God, wow, here you go. Here we are.
(17:31):
This is like a whole new thing.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
But here's the thing. It never ceases being weird.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
No, it's always weird, because.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Like I am an adult and it's still so weird.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Let's take a trip back to the fifteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Hit me.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
One of the greatest Renaissance artists, Leonardo da Vinci, painted
the Mona Lisa between fifteen oh three and fifteen oh six.
Now why why did he paint this, this variouscial painting.
Well because wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo commissioned Da
Vinci to paint a portrait of his wife, Lisa Gerandini. Giocondo,
(18:12):
also the source of the painting's Italian nickname La Gioconda
or in French, la jaconde. The literal translation of that
is the joyful one or the happy woman, which is
a play on both her married name Giocondo and and
her expression in the painting. Francesco never actually paid for
(18:35):
the painting, so Da Vinci held on to it and
wound up taking it with him when he moved to
France in fifteen sixteen. At the request of King Francois
the first. This is not fact per se, but this
is generally the historian's consensus. It's kind of the closest
we can get. According to the Louvers records, King Francoise
(18:59):
was enamored with the work and officially purchased the Mona
Lisa from Da Vinci in fifteen eighteen. Da Vinci would
sadly pass away a short while later in fifteen nineteen.
He was sixty seven years old, which is like pretty
ripe for that time period. Yeah, so this is when
mon Lisa sort of started bouncing around. She would move
from French leader to French leader, allegedly sitting in King Francois,
(19:21):
King Francis's bathroom for a short stant, then onto the
fontine Bleau Palace. Later, Louis the fourteenth would place her
at the Palace of Versailles, and then Napoleon would keep
her in his own private bedchambers. How intimate apparently he
referred to her. He referred to her as the quote
(19:44):
Sphinx of the occident. I think this is really evidence
of the spell that this painting can cast on people.
That she wasn't just hung in a hall somewhere she
was like in private quarters for people intimate. Mona Lisa
was established as part of the French Royal collection eventually
(20:04):
and was transferred to the Louver.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Accordingly, question, yeah, question, professor, Yeah, who transferred her to
the French collection?
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Like there was a moment. That's a great question, and
I don't know the precise answer, but there was a
moment where the royal collection was in the late seventeen hundreds,
the Royal collection was made public. It was made to
be sort of owned by the French people, and that's
(20:36):
when a lot of that art made it into the Louver,
which is Yeah, So the Louver first began showing the
Mona Lisa on public display in eighteen oh four. Fast
forward about a century and the Mona Lisa belonged to
the people of France, sitting comfortably in the salon carre
of the Louver along with various other masterpieces. This is
(21:00):
before it was it got its own sort of gallery.
But one former employee of the Louver believed that maybe
she belonged elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Don't done, Yeah, you need the law and order like
bumpo done.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Now we get into the height. So we're back in
nineteen eleven, and the heist of the twentieth century was
all like Gray Poupon. So who took the Mona Lisa? Well?
Was it an international crime syndicate? Was it Napoleon's ghost
(21:36):
desperate for some new bedroom decorps? Was it a time
traveling banksy? Perhaps No, it is none of the above. No, no,
but yeah, and now there is a swarm of detectives,
sixty some odd detectives, following a myriad of leads, and
all the while she is actually actually just a few
blocks over from the Louver, resting in a trunk with
(21:59):
a fall bottom, owned by a man named Vincenzo Perugia.
I think we have a photo of Vincenzo here. Let's
take a look at this man.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Look at him.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
A literal mustache twirl, Yeah, yeah, a little bit of
a yeah. I mean, he's he's he's got that energy.
He's Italian. He's an Italian immigrant and living in Paris,
something of a handyman, and he had been employed at
the Louver.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
There are various reports of how the act of the
heist actually went down, but all told, it was quite seamless.
Perugia had been employed by the louver and and in fact,
in one of his duties, he had helped construct the
glass case that held the Mona Lisa, so he knew
exactly how it sort of came together and came apart,
(22:54):
and precisely how to remove her quite carefully. Now interesting
side note, he apparently suffered a lot of discrimination as
an Italian immigrant in France and had a bit of
a grudge against French society, which he will claim played
into his actions. And as we'll learn later, on Monday
(23:17):
August twenty first, nineteen eleven, Perugia entered the museum at
a time when it was only open to staff mondays
were cleaning days. Now some reports say he actually hid
the night before in a supply closet and then e
merged on that Monday morning. In any case, he was
wearing a workman's smock, so kind of, you know, fit
in with the staff. He snuck into the hall removed
(23:41):
the painting in this glass case, which at that time
they weren't they were worried about, I guess about graffiti
and things. So it did have a glass case. It's
nothing like the bulletproof thing it's behind now, but and
it weighed, it was quite heavy, but he got it
off the wall. Other reports say he had two accomplices.
(24:02):
There's different, different details floating around, but managed to get
this bulky glass case into a stairwell where he was
able to open the case and pull out just the painting,
this piece of poplar with some oil paint on it,
and then he just was able to stroll out onto
(24:23):
the Rue de Revoulie. Yes, another cool, sort of fun detail.
He actually found himself locked in to the louver because
it was a working day. They weren't allowing you know,
the public in on this on this Monday, and he
(24:44):
wasn't able to get out the way he thought. But
then a plumber, a louve like staff plumber walked up
and was like, no problem, I'll help you out. Here
you go, and like helped him through the door. So
off he goes, and he's carrying the painting just down
the street under his smock apparently.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Can you imagine.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, no, it's it's nuts. It's nuts. The anxiety I
feel like what makes me not a criminal mastermind is
like I as soon as I even start to think
about that, I just start sweating.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
By the way I am, it is so far in
the degree of panic for me, even when I know
I've done nothing wrong. Exactly, if you were like, hey, hey,
I need to talk to you later, I'd be like,
what have I done? What don't I remember?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
And then you're what I maybe do and not the
same way? What is what? What childhood trauma led us
into this? It's so annoying, I mean, and like this,
And it's also very interesting this that that fear of
being perceived as guilty can can actually make you act
more guilty. Uh and and this is a this will
(25:57):
this is this will emerge in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And here's the thing. And I bet you get this.
When you're an actor, people think you must be a
good liar, and I'm like, no, I memorize other people's words.
I can't come up with them on my own. I'm
not like a liar on the Flygh.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, I'm bad at that.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Exactly did he get caught because he was a panicky
little potato?
Speaker 3 (26:16):
No? No, no, no he didn't. But it gets interesting.
So local police concluded that they just eventually, it took
like twenty four hours talking to the photographer and you know,
looking everywhere, they finally realized like this thing is gone
like it's stolen, and word spread fast news reports began
to extend beyond Paris, and in short order it just
(26:38):
became a global scandal, like how could such a prominent
museum lose one of their masterpieces. A French publication called
lilos Stracion wrote quote, what audacious criminal, what mystifier? What
maniac collector? What insane lover has committed this abduction?
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Insane lover?
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Yes? Like a French publication goes right to like he
must love this painting. He's an insane lover. Or he's
doing it for his lover's love.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
He is obsessed with her, he loves his mona Lisa.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Oh it's so good, it's so French. I love it.
The New York Times Correspondent posted an article claiming offers
of five million dollars for its return. Now that's it's
unclear if those were actually real, but that's more than
one hundred and sixty nine million dollars in today's money.
Oh my god, it's not feeling worth it.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I mean, if you paid me one hundred and sixty
nine million dollars, would I try to steal something for someone?
But I wouldn't be able to pull it off. So no,
I can. I can ask myself the question, but I
already know even in theory, I'm going to fail.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Oh boy. The art curator of the louver said that
he had a gut feeling that it was stolen, so
that the would attempt to copy it, but he wasn't.
He wasn't gonna let that or even like return a
copy and hold on to the original. But he would
(28:08):
not let that fly because quote, I studied the picture
for years, mounted and unmounted. I know every minor detail
of it, and I would recognize a copy, however perfect
after five minutes observation. Okay, so that's a quote so
obviously quite cocky about his painting analysis skills, but but
(28:30):
it's actually true. Because he was an expert as as
the curator of the loop, he knew a lot about
what's called crack colure, which is the tiny little cracks
and fissures that form over time. And as an oil
painting ages, the Mona Lisa upclose is quite cracked like
it is, it's covered in sort of checking and cracking,
(28:54):
and that is that is that becomes something of a
DNA signature or a fingerprint for a painting because that's
virtually impossible to duplicate. You can duplicate the cracking, but
to match cracking, Yeah, exactly, it's not gonna It's just
gonna be impossible. So naturally, lots of odd theories and
false accusations are flying all around. One claimed the JP Morgan,
(29:17):
the American banker, had the picture stolen so that he
could keep it in his private collection. Yeah. A renowned
poet by the name of Guillame Aoignier became a suspect.
He was forgive my French accent, by the way, I'm
very like, I'm kind of cocky about it, but I
know it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
It's not terrible.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
So apore was one of the rare folks who apparently
was not a fan of the painting, and at one
point had joked about burning the louver down. But he
was like he was kind of a sort of counterculture poet, bohemian,
just in the like almost like a comic. Sure. Yeah,
(29:58):
and he was well known and he was something of
celebrity in the in the in French sort of artistic
culture at the time. A Poigniere's trail led to a
shocking second suspect, Pablo Picasso. What yes, isn't this wild?
They thought that Picasso might have stolen the Mona Lisa
(30:19):
shut up? For what? Well, the link between a poigniere
and Picasso was this shady buddy that they had, who
had who had stolen Iberian busts for them from the Louver,
like they did have stolen property from the louver.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
We why why?
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Why? Why?
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Because they wanted to learn to copy them or just
because they thought it was like funny and they were
a bunch of crazy drunks.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
I don't know the I don't know the truth of
that answer, but I do know, well, could you not know? Well,
Picasso did also paint one of the busts, so it
was for artistic reasons presumably, but like, also, why a
stolen thing? Anyway? It's so badass that Picasso had a
stolen bust from the.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Loop, it really is. It makes me like him more.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Police investigated them, and this is where that guilty thing
it gets in, because I read a thing about how
they were questioned and Picasso was so terrified and overwhelmed
with fear that that he was sobbing and me yeah,
(31:25):
and and and acting so guilty that they were just like, uh,
you couldn't have done this.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
You're not.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
You're too much of a whimp. You're not. You don't
have the sort of like fortitude to pull something like
this off. But it is a wild connection. Anyway, After
considerable questioning, both Are and Pablo Picasso were were let
go and uh and they were not suspects any longer.
Another two years goes by Sophia Bush. They don't, they
(31:53):
don't find it. Two years, two years, and they're starting
to think, oh my god, maybe the Mona Lisa is
gone forever. Until in December of nineteen thirteen, a Florentine
art and antiquities dealer Alfredo Jeri, Now I do have
now my Italian accident is horrific, but I'm just gonna
(32:13):
I'm diving all in, Alfredo Jeri. I also like to
do it like this. I put on this voice for
a Brando. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
He received an odd correspondence from a man calling himself,
wait for it, Leonard or Leonardo perhaps yeah, calling himself Leonardo.
This mystery man claimed he had stolen the Mona Lisa
and wanted to return it to its birthplace, Italy. Wow,
so he's now claiming that he stole it for patriotic reasons.
(32:49):
Jari was suspicious but intrigued. He agreed to meet with
this mysterious Leonard at the Tripoli Italia Hotel in Florence,
and brought along with him the Uffizi Gallery director Giovanni Polgi. Okay,
the Offizi Gallery obviously being like the louver of Italy.
(33:10):
And this guy knows his ship, let's put it that way.
So the three men arranged to meet in Leonard's hotel room,
where a wooden trunk was waiting Leonyard removed a false
bottom from the trunk, and they're wrapped in a red
silk cloth. Was the Mona lis is the jacund one?
(33:35):
Pretty dramatic reveal, right, a red silken cloth.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
This is really giving Thomas Crown affair?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yes right, and I like it. I do too. So
are Italian art dealers. They're no fools. They they are
like pretty sure this is the real deal, and they
play it very cool. They confirm its authenticity, and Jeri
and Polgi pretended to agree to this to Leonard's asking
(34:03):
price of one hundred thousand dollars, and they sort of
kept him on the hook. Now that's one hundred thousand
dollars at that time is three million dollars to day.
It's not too shabby. And this is the primary thing
that sort of throws his patriotic motives into question. Right,
He's like, he's also kind of asking for a big
paycheck here.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Right, He's like, no, I'm doing it for Italy, but
also for my retirement.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
He's like my Italian bride, but also not give me
a little cheddar. Right, that's like a little Mozarella with
this perhaps, and that tracks for a thief, Yeah, exactly.
So they told Leonard that they needed to take the
painting to the Afizi gallery to further confirm that it
was the.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Real thing before they paid him.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah. But then, of course they immediately alerted the police
and Perugia was arrested the next day on December eleventh,
nineteen thirteen, in his hotel room. Boom caught in the
at Perugia. Yeah, they got him, they snagged.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Him, They got him.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Wait, but so then what happened? What happened to the
handyman from the Louver and everybody else involved?
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Well, Perugia is that handyman?
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Oh he is the handyman? Yes? Oh gosh, sorry, I
don't know why.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
He held on to it for years.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
I'm wondering, do you think that it was always his
plan to, you know, do it for the home country,
or do you do you think he wanted to like
see if he could and then it was such a
scandal that he kept it in a trunk and was.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Like, oh shit, well what do I do?
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Or maybe it was a little mixed up.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
It's a bit of columns A, B, and C here,
because you know, it was there is evidence that that
he did suffer discrimination and had a grudge against sort
of French society culture, and also that that this painting
being such an icon of Italian culture and Italian uh
sort of sort of brilliance and excellence in the arts,
(36:01):
his having a sort of it would it would clock
that he would then see that as a as a
as a sort of righteous target to take and and
as almost as like a punishment to the French. That
this is my speculation. I don't know how much evidence
there is of this, but but I think, uh it,
(36:21):
but this sort of tracks in my mind. And and
then realizing after a couple of years that like he's
sitting on a seriously hot potato that he can't sell
or like there's no one that that will fence the
Mona Lisa after especially after like worldwide headlines. And then
he's like, Okay, now I have to sort of create
this narrative that I can sell it to these Italians, uh,
for the for the right reasons, and maybe they'll like
(36:45):
buy it and let me sort of be stay anonymous.
But of course they're like, no, you're busted, like you.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, they're like, we're not stupid. We can't hang this
in our museum and be like.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Yeah, oh look what we found. We just floated down
the river.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
But now that it's here, we're not gonna we're not
sending it back.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
It doesn't work like exactly all right, So Perusia, Uh,
this is this is really cool. Perusia also said that
over time he felt he quote fell victim to her
smile and feasted my eyes on my treasure every evening.
I fell in love with her, he said, which is uh,
(37:24):
which is more sort of evidence of her, her spell,
her her sort of mystical powers. But but yeah, wow,
she was a hot she was a hot. Yeah, she
was a hot hot to Molly. There After, of course
(37:44):
this was all discovered and he was arrested and and
uh found guilty. It was returned to France, and we
have a photo of It's of of her giddy homecoming
at the Louver. Let's see. Wow, obviously a huge party.
You can see how everyone's dancing with reckless abandon and glee. Yes,
I love how the guy holding her looks like her legs.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, a little bit of something.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
You can kind of see. You can't see the guy's
face who's actually holding the painting, but you can see
his legs.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
You can see his little top hat.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Yeah, right, right, right, Yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Almost feels like he'd pop through the frame where it
not so valuable.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
I wish we could go back to this, this style.
I love all the mustaches and top hats and trench coats.
Although I must say they do look hot, like I mean,
they look hot as in like like spicy hot, but
they also look like they're probably sweating under all that wool.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah. It's also one of those things like I don't
know about you, but we have air conditioning and like
we can wear linen in the summer now.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
I look at pictures like this and I think, like, oh,
I know why they used to have fainting couches.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yeah, there you go, it makes sense, you go. I
love that, you know. So right upon Mona Lisa's return
to France, everyone wanted to get an eye on this
new mythical painting. Over one hundred twenty thousand people came
to see her in just two days. Da Vinci's painting
had exploded into the cultural stratosphere. All the press and
news coverage took the painting to the next level. So
(39:16):
what happened to our man Vincenzo Perugia, the art thief. Well,
he was tried in Italy, where he again he claimed
that he was stealing the painting for patriotic reasons. He
became something of a folk hero and he was sentenced
to a year in prison, but he wound up only
serving about seven months before this is right before World
(39:39):
War One, which then broke out, and he left prison,
joined the army, fought for Italy, and then wound up
dying in France in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Oh gie.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
As for La Gioconda, her smile still smites eight million
visitors per year. Eight million visitors go and see the
Monaliese ever year, which is that's insane and She's so
popular that she has her own mailbox at the Louver
because she gets so much direct fan mail.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
What an odd thing to write a letter to a painting. Yeah, interesting,
I guess when I when I hear you say eight
million people a year ago to France to visit her,
I think, Look, the guy was clearly misguided and obviously
a little fantastical in his storytelling about his motivations. But
that's a whole lot of money France has made on
(40:33):
this painting and not Italy.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
You're raising a really interesting, uh, really interesting question that
that I think this story brings up. There are a
couple of I think, kind of high altitude takeaways from
this story. One is is just how the narrative around
the Mona Lisa, like her theft, the scandal, the recovery,
(40:56):
it just it became as important and exciting as the painting.
It's and it's it's a kind of a reflection of
how the story of something can almost matter more than
just the reality of it, right. I mean, that's certainly true.
I think for celebrities, like we celebrities cultivate stories and
(41:17):
kind of narratives, we often find out like, oh, that
person was not what we thought. I don't just mean celebrities,
I mean like public figures, politicians, whoever.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
They'll kind of cast you as a character correct rather
than highlight your reality. And the interesting thing is, I
think when you become a media figure, if that if
there is a character that is not accurate or not
honoring the nuance of your life, but it's profitable to others,
it's the one that will.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Prevail, and that's sucks.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
And so I think there's something really interesting about I
don't know, it's crazy to me that this woman, the
Mona Lisa, seems to be a person in our cultural lexicon.
I mean she gets fan mail, yeah, and she's a painting.
There's there's a there's something wild about you.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
She's she's magical. In my view, it sort of took
this heist for people to truly see like how sort
of mystical and powerful she is. And obviously Leonardo da
Vinci is such a legend for so many reasons as
a scientist and a painter and all these things, and
and this is this, this work is truly special.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It almost strikes me like it's momentum, circular momentum. Something
started it, and I would wager that to your point
at the top of the episode, you know, the haze,
the kind of the colors, the way her eyes follow you,
things that had never been done before were very arresting
(42:52):
for people. But then people like to feel like they're
in on something, so when they hear that this thing
is very arresting, then they say, oh, I was so
arrested by this painting, and then the whole thing just grows.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah, this story also very much raises the very real
question about repatriation. Of course, Perugia was I think, claiming
that he was repatriating the Mona Lisa for sort of
cynical reasons to maybe help exonerate himself, although there probably
(43:28):
was also some national pride that wrapped up in him
or resentment for French culture. But the idea of returning
cultural treasures to their rightful home is a very real one,
and it's something that has bubbled up more and more,
and I think just for example, the Netherlands recently returned
(43:52):
one hundred and nineteen bronzes to Nigeria which had been
looted in the nineteenth century, and you know, they're finally
back where they belong after one hundred and thirty years.
To me, that's inspiring proof that even old injustices can
be addressed through yes, through dialogue. It takes an honest
(44:12):
accounting of history to kind of get to these places.
A lot of museums are now experimenting with shared custody
of items, rotating collections, so that people around the world
can access all of this history, and that reminds me
of like, you know, when we're kids, our parents being like,
(44:32):
you have to share those toys, right, to share those books, right,
everybody gets a turn. And it strikes me that whether
we're talking about art or stories or history itself, the
more we treat it as something to be passed around
and experienced by everyone, the richer it all becomes. I
don't know, I think that's something that's some hopeful shit.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah it is. It's almost like learning about other cultures
is cool, gett a get here.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yeah, it's almost it's almost like learning about history is cool.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Doesn't make me cool pretty, I don't know, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
I think so, Sophia Bush, you are extremely cool. This
has been so so hard cool. I feel like I
run into you every like, I don't know, it's like
a year a couple of years ago by I get
that and then I get the high five you somewhere,
and this has been like such a fun hang and
I'm so grateful that you came on.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Thanks in a world that is odd to know you
have like fellow history nerds out there. Feels good.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Yeah we got homies, Yeah we do. Snapoo is a
production of iHeart Podcasts and Snapoo Media, a partnership between
Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post
production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me
Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim Whitney, Donaldson,
(46:06):
and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino
and Tory Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical
direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is
Brett Harris. Logo and branding by The Collected Works. Legal
review from Dan Welsh, Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special
(46:27):
thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein and everyone
at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman, Nikki Etoor,
Nathan O'towski and Alex Corral. While I have you don't
forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafoo,
The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available
(46:47):
now from any book retailer. Just go to Snaffoo dashbook
dot com. Thanks for listening, and see you next week.
Host
Ed Helms
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