The Theft of the Mona Lisa - History's Greatest Mysteries (S4)

On Tuesday, August 22nd, 1911, around 9 a.m., artist Louis Beyrou arrives at the Louvre and makes his way to one of the museum's most famous rues, the Salon Carré. Beyrou makes his living copying the old masters. Today, he's working on a painting that features Leonardo da Vinci's 400-year-old masterpiece, La Jaconde, known to English speakers as the Mona Lisa. The woman in the painting most likely represents Lisa Giardini. She is the wife of a prosperous Florentine wool merchant named Francesco del Giacondo. Leonardo begins her portrait in approximately 1503. Art historians believe that it was da Vinci's favorite painting. Leonardo da Vinci dies in 1519 in France, and the king of France, Francis I, buys it from da Vinci's estate. And then a couple centuries later, in 1797, the Louvre, which had been a royal palace, is converted into the world's largest museum at the time, and that is where the Mona Lisa remains today. By 1911, the Mona Lisa is not the most famous or the most expensive painting in the Louvre, but there's something unique and mesmerizing about the smile of La Jaconde. It's what draws Beyrou to be so excited about including it in his latest work. But when he gets to the Salon Carré on that Tuesday morning, he's in for a huge surprise. Instead of seeing that familiar face looking back at him, Beyrou sees only a blank stretch of wall and four empty pegs. He expresses his concern with this missing painting, but the guard reassures him that there's nothing to worry about, that the painting has undoubtedly been taken by one of the museum curators to be photographed and cataloged for the museum. And so he checks in with the photography department and makes a grave discovery. La Jaconde was never taken off the wall for that purpose. Turns out, she's been stolen. Panic ensues at the Louvre, and the museum reaches out to the chief of the Paris police for help. His name is Louis Lepine. Louis Lepine is like the French Sherlock Holmes, a master of deduction. If there's anyone who can crack this case, it's Louis Lepine. Lepine and his army of men arrive under two hours after discovery that the painting is missing. They shut the museum down under the guise of a broken water pipe and launch an investigation for any clues as to what could have happened to the painting. After an hour of searching, police finally uncover some evidence. Mona Lisa's heavy frame and protective glass casing have been discarded in the dark corner of a service stairwell. What they deduce is that the thief must have lifted it off the wall and then kind of scurried away into one of these stairwells, stripped off the covering and the frame and discarded it and made off with it. If you were stealing a painting that was on canvas, for example, you could take it out of its frame and roll it up, potentially hide it inside a cloak. But the Mona Lisa is painted on a white poplar panel. It has a heavy Renaissance-style frame. It's 21 by 30 inches wide, so with its protective frame, the actual Mona Lisa weighs 90 pounds. You can't stick it under your coat and walk out. One of the police officers notices right away that there's a doorknob missing from this door in the stairwell. They assume that this is the way that the thief got out of the building with the Mona Lisa. Unfortunately, the PIN soon discovers that whoever stole the painting has quite a head start. The museum's maintenance supervisor says the previous day, on Monday, when the museum was closed, he was walking through the Salon Carré and saw the Mona Lisa hanging in her usual spot around 7 a.m. By 8.30 a.m., when he returned, the painting was not there anymore. At the time, this didn't raise any alarms. He also assumed that the painting was probably being photographed. So Lepine is pretty upset because, at this point, the thief could be at least 24 hours ahead of them. Within hours of the theft's discovery, the story breaks in the Paris press, and news services from around the world begin converging on the loop. Lepine decides to set up an experiment. He has a replica of the Mona Lisa made and hung on the four pegs on the wall where the original would have stood. And first, he has a couple of his police officers try to remove the painting and exit the building. As the police officers went in and began fumbling and trying to remove the painting from the wall, Lepine kept time, and it ended up taking about five minutes for the two police officers to get the wires adjusted and remove the painting and exit the building. He then asks a museum employee to do the same thing. That museum employee very skillfully removes the wires and has it off the wall in seconds. This experiment confirms to Lepine that the thief isn't just knowledgeable about museum work. They also know the Louvre intimately. Though the Louvre is closed to the public on Monday, it is still a workday for much of the staff. Lepine, thorough as ever, requests a full list of everybody who had access to the museum on that day and who came in and out. Nobody is above suspicion. As Lepine's investigators go through this cadre of people, they come across the plumber by the name of Sauvet. Sauvet happened to be in the very stairwell where the painting frame was recovered on that morning. Sauvet says that he encountered somebody by this back door who asked to be let out because the doorknob had been removed from the door. This person, whoever it was, was wearing the white smock that all members of the Louvre staff wore. So Sauvet's impression was that this was a museum employee who got locked inside. So he said, no big deal, I'll let you out. It's 1913. Nearly two years have passed since the Mona Lisa was stolen. The case has gone stone cold. But that changes when a prominent art and antiques dealer receives a mysterious letter. An art dealer by the name of Alfredo Geri is running advertisements in Italian newspapers stating that he's willing to pay top price for high quality works of art. Early in December, he gets a letter with a Paris postmark from a guy named Leonard The letter goes on to say that in exchange for 500,000 lira, approximately three million US dollars today, he will bring the painting back to Italy where it rightfully belongs. The letter is actually pretty articulate in its love of Italy. It says that the stolen work of Leonardo da Vinci is in my possession. It seems to belong to Italy since its painter was Italian. My dream is to give back this masterpiece to the land from which it came and the country that inspired it. Initially, Geri suspects the letter is a hoax and holds off on notifying the authorities. In the ensuing two years, Europe has been racked with Mona Lisa fever. Countless claims of its whereabouts or fakes being issued and being immediately dismissed are rampant. And Geri doesn't want to be taken for a fool. But something in this letter piques his interest. In the letter, Leonard talks about some of the details on the backside of the wooden panel of the Mona Lisa and Geri worries that it actually might have some truth to it. Geri invites the man to his gallery for a clandestine meeting on December 10th, 1913. Geri is waiting and in walks a thin, younger man who insists that he has the real Mona Lisa and the reason he knows this is because he stole the painting himself. Geri isn't convinced, but he does agree to meet the letter writer. The man pulls a trunk from under the hotel room's bed. This looks like just an ordinary trunk. And when he opens it, Geri is immediately disappointed. It's just discarded items, but it has a secret. It has a false bottom. So he pulls the false bottom for the trunk and there is a solid plank of wood. And the Mona Lisa smile emerges. The painting is real. Geri immediately alerts the authorities. Leonard is arrested and his name is discovered to be Vincenzo Perugia. To immense fanfare, the Mona Lisa is returned on January 4th, 1914. Perugia serves just eight months with the court deeming his theft an act of patriotic duty. A century later, thieves hit the Louvre again, swiping crown jewels worth tens of millions of dollars. If the investigators get lucky, these items will also be found and returned, just like da Vinci's famous painting.