22 August 1911 - theft of the Mona Lisa. Chief suspects: Guillaume Apollinaire and his accomplice Pablo Picasso...

On 22 August 1911, the painter Louis Béroud made his habitual visit to the Louvre art museum in Paris and headed straight to the gallery housing the Mona Lisa, as he wished to make a copy of the world's most famous painting. But when he arrived, his artist's eyes, trained to see things in fine detail, noticed that the painting was missing.

But Louis was unconcerned, and even joked with the guard: 'Who knows where women ever get to? When they're not with their lovers they're with their photographers.' Ha ha ha! However, when, hours later, the lady with the enigmatic smile had not returned, Louis despatched the guard to consult the museum photographer in case he had taken it. The photographer's reply? 'Negative.'

Panic ensued! They've stolen the Mona Lisa! Nom de Dieu! The head of museum security and sixty officers searched the building with a fine tooth comb. Nothing doing! The only clue, a lonely fingerprint on the glass recently installed to safeguard the work from....theft!

The fingerprint is compared with the museum's 257 employees, but there is no match. The museum director resigns and the conspiracy theories commence. The far right sees the spectre of a Jewish plot. The German emperor Wilhelm II is a suspect, at least for one newspaper. A reward of 25,000 francs for the painting's recovery is offered by the Society of Friends of the Louvre. A newspaper doubles the amount. Then someone suggests that the only way to solve the crime is to send for Patricia Cornwell, until it is pointed out that she would not be born until 1956.

But the theft is also good for business, as more 'art lovers' visit the art gallery to look at the empty space than ever came to look at the painting!

Then, suddenly, out of the blue, like a clap of thunder, on 7 September, the police make a breakthrough (or so they think). They arrest the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, sling him in the slammer (or slam him in the slinger), and search his rooms. 

Marie Laurencin and Apollinaire
Painting by Douanier Rousseau (1909)

It seems that years earlier the poet had been the recipient of stolen goods, namely primitive statuettes, allegedly levitated from the Louvre by his secretary at the time Géry Pieret. Present on the day the stash was handed over was Pablo Picasso. Then Pieret disappeared, only to resurface after the theft of the Mona Lisa, when, on 28 August, he visited the offices of the publication Paris-Journal with a statuette that he claimed to have stolen from the Louvre in 1904. The next day Paris-Journal published its article, and Guillaume and Pablo were thrown into a wet panic.

What should they do with the statuette bought from Pieret and obviously stolen from the Louvre? The two men consult. Perhaps inspired by Guillaume's most celebrated poem - Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine / Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine - they decide to throw it into the river! 

But Guillaume has cold feet. So instead, under cover of darkness, they deposit the statuette at the doors of Paris-Journal, and then make a run for it. 

After his arrest and detention on 7 September, an investigating magistrate decided that Apollinaire was not behind the theft of the Mona Lisa, and on 12 September he was released without charge.

It was not until December 1913 that the true culprit identified himself as one Vincenzo Peruggia, who, while posing under the name of Vincenzo Leonard, tried to sell the painting to an art dealer in Florence. But the art dealer had him arrested and the painting was returned to the Louvre where it resides to this day, as haughty and enigmatic as ever!

Leonardo da Vinci and the Mona Lisa

The Louvre in Paris is once again the world's most popular art museum with 8,800,000 visitors in 2011. [Source: Art Newspaper] In 2007, the museum staff went on strike, citing as the reason the stress of looking after the Mona Lisa and other popular paintings. "The stress is clearly linked to the number of visitors," a Louvre attended told the AFP news agency at the time. "There can be 65,000 visitors on one day. It's unbearable...."

Leonardo's masterpiece is like a magnet attracting visitors from all corners of the world. It has become an icon, part of western mythology. But if you think that you know all about the lady with the enigmatic smile, then think again, for according to Dr Vito Franco of Palermo University, La Giaconda had high cholesterol, evident, claims the doctor, from a build-up of fatty acids discernible under the skin.

He also suggested the presence of lipoma, a benign fatty-tissue tumour, in her right eye. "The people depicted in art reveal their physicality, tell us of their vulnerable humanity, regardless of the artist's awareness of it", he told the Italian newspaper La Stampa. [Source: BBC News 6 January 2010]

These claims add to those made in 2007 by French inventor Pascal Cotte, who said that his 240-megalpixel scan of the painting revealed traces of facial hair obliterated by restoration efforts. Also her face was originally wider, and Leonardo also altered the position of two fingers on her left hand. Monsieur Cotte used infra red while scanning he work, and says his scan revealed that it once had bright blues and whites, and not just the heavy greens, yellows and browns it has today. [Source: Live Science]

"Quick! Quick! The Mona Lisa. I'm double-parked!"

Whether or not the Louvre art museum in Paris is the best in the world is a matter of debate and local pride and prejudice, but it is apparently the most visited, and many visitors will be there for one reason only, to see it's most famous attraction, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.


It was painted some time between 1503 and 1519 and is variously known as La Gioconda, La Jaconde, and Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Though now regarded as the most famous painting in the world, it was not generally known until the middle of the Nineteenth Century, since when its reputation has soared, and is now an unmistakable icon of western art.


In 1911 the picture was stolen and suspicion fell on two of the leading artistic figures of the time, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the painter Pablo Picasso. In the event the culprit was discovered to be someone much more banal, a certain Vincenzo Peruggia, an employee at the Louvre and an Italian patriot who wanted to see the painting returned to its native land. He was only discovered when he tried to sell the work to the Uffizi in Florence.


If you're planning on visiting the Louvre to see Leonardo's masterpiece please remember that many, many other people will have had the same idea, so don't expect to rub noses with the enigmatic Florentine lady. It's also very small, only 30 inches x 21 inches (77 cms x 53 cms) so those opera glasses may come in handy when you're peering at it from 50 feet distance.

"Out of the way! I've only got half a day and I've got the Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and the Centre Pompidou whatever that is still to do!"
[picture Wikipedia]