Vincenzo Peruggia, decorator and painter, on the night of August 20, 1911, stole Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting from the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Peruggia, a young Italian who had emigrated to France, had worked in the display case where the painting was kept, then in the Salon Carré in the Louvre. He knew the place and the customs of the museum staff very well.
Although guilty of theft, Peruggia was not arrested until late in December 1912, when he delivered a letter signed “Leonardo” to the Florence antiquities dealer Alfredo Geri: “The painting is in my hands, because it belongs to Italy; Leonardo is Italian.” . .”
The thief said he wanted to return the Mona Lisa painting in exchange for the modest sum of 500,000 lire “for expenses”. The decisive meeting took place in Florence, on the third floor of the guest house “Tripoli” (still open to the public and now converted into Hotel La Gioconda); Along with Geri was also the director of the Uffizi Gallery, Giovanni Poggi.
The painting was in a suitcase under the bed in Vincenzo Peruggia’s hotel room. The thief handed over the Mona Lisa to his guests to verify its authenticity and took a walk through the city of Florence. It was during this walk that he was finally arrested.
Peruggia justified himself by saying that he stole the painting because he wanted to return it to his country: “to return to Italy the result of Napoleon’s looting.”
Not knowing, as many Italians still don’t, that the Mona Lisa has always been French in her own right, having been sold for 4,000 ducats to King Francis I by an assistant to Leonardo Da Vinci, who inherited the painting after the Leonardo’s death. .
The Peruggia was sent to jail and the Mona Lisa, after being exhibited in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence for a few days, and for a brief time in Rome and Milan, returned to the royal halls of the Louvre, where it is still preserved. .
Today, of course, there is no trace of the Hotel La Gioconda, but there remains a vivid memory of those days when the Mona Lisa “threatened” to become Italian again. But in Florence there are those who still hope for a return, a fact that the committee calls on France to once again welcome Leonardo’s masterpiece.
I wonder if the famous painting will return to Italy!