The blow with which the Game Of Leonardo da Vinci He is still at the center of fascinating hypotheses today: Vincenzo Perugiaan Italian who worked in the famous museum, went down in history as the official thief who made the most famous theft of art in history, which took place on the night between 21 and 22 August 1911, to report the Mona Lisa On the native soil of Leonardo, in Italy. But the analysis of the process documents and further conjectures seem to highlight that Perchuggia may have been stuck, perhaps by an art merchant specialized in fake author. How did things really go and what is the true story of the theft of the Mona Lisa? After more than a century it is difficult to say exactly, but we can try to reconstruct the story.
The theft of the Mona Lisa: as Vincenzo Perugia did to steal it
According to the reconstruction of the events that took place through the investigations and the analysis of the process documents, the story tells that everything begins around 7 in the morning of the August 21, 1911 to Paris. A man wandered around the Louvre rooms: his name was Vincenzo Pietro Peruggiaa Italian born in Treino (Varese) who made the profession decoratorThe maintenance of paintings and works of art and the mason.
So far, nothing strange: but on August 21 it was a Monday, closing day of the museumand for Perugia it was the ideal moment, not to do his work, but to steal one of the most famous paintings in the world, the Mona Lisapainted by Leonardo da Vinci at the beginning of the 1500s. Perugia entered without being seen by anyone, he hid to wait for the right time. He entered the room dedicated to the Mona Lisa, removed it, and then fled from a secondary door, abandoning the Louvre.
Perugia returned home, he hid the picture And he returned to work, where he justified his delay, creating an alibi, saying that he had raised his elbow the night before and felt bad. The next day, the museum employees immediately realized that thework of art had disappeared. Initially it was thought that he had been removed from the official photographer of the museum, subsequently he hypothesized that an American collector had been stolen and then, during the investigation, we also came to stop as possible suspects nothing less than the poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire and the famous painter Pablo Picasso.
The police questioned all the staff of the museum, including Perugia, and the gendarmes also made an inspection in his house, but the Mona Lisa was not foundthe Italian thief had hidden well in one wooden case in his home.
The discovery of Mona Lisa stolen in 1913
Two years later, a Florentine collector name Alfredo Gerihe published an announcement in which he communicated to be looking for valuable works to create a private exhibition: Perchia intercepted the announcement and replied to Geri. When Alfredo Geri read that a mysterious Mr. Léonard V. he said of be in possession of Mona Lisawho was well known to have been stolen, immediately warned the director of the Uffizi.
Geri then made an appointment in Perugia in Florence, ended interested, took the picture in custody, mobilized the carabinieri and, the next day, Vincenzo Perugia he was arrested.
In his defense the thief, he said that it was anpatriotic action: indignant by Napoleonic thefts – it will then be discovered that the Mona Lisa was not at all stolen by Napoleon but brought to France by Leonardo himself – he only wanted this masterpiece to return home, a Florence.
The mysteries related to the theft of the Mona Lisa: who was the real culprit
The intriguing affair could end here, but in reality there is more: in recent years the acts of the trial in Perugia have been studied, and some man’s correspondence have also been analyzed, now preserved in theState Archive of Florence .
From the analysis of these documents, it seems that he percuts, during the interrogation, has contradicted himself several times, also providing details that would exonerate him. In fact, it seems that the true principal of the theft is a Argentine art merchant, Eduardo de Valfiernospecialized in false author, who contacted two other employees of the Louvre – the Lancellotti brothers, also mentioned in the correspondence – and that only at the end was involved Perugia used perhaps as a scapegoat, perhaps with specific agreements.
It seems to be among the pages of Lupine adventuresthe most famous gentleman thief ever, instead of thefts like these are not rare at all. Just think – just to name a few – when in 2004 theMunch scream From the National Gallery of Oslo, to the two thieves who dressed as policemen in 1990 stole paintings of Rembrandt, Degas, Vermeer And others from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, at the 8 works of Monet Stuffed by the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris in 1985.
Where is the truth? We are not able to know with certainty, but it is certain that that of the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 was a blow with the bows that went down in history.
