The stolen smile: How a theft turned the mona lisa into a universal legend
Imagine Paris, an August morning in 1911. The city wakes in the stifling summer heat, cafés line their chairs on the terraces, and the first visitors to the Louvre pass through its monumental doors. Among them, a man in a worker’s gray smock slips discreetly toward the Salon Carré. He doesn’t look like an art lover—his calloused hands betray a laborer, perhaps a carpenter. That morning, no one pays him any mind. Yet by noon, he will have accomplished the unthinkable: stealing the Mona Lisa.
By Artedusa
••10 min readIt wasn’t the painting that was missed, hanging there for decades among hundreds of other canvases in that crowded room where paintings were stacked from floor to ceiling. No, what struck people was the audacity of the act. And above all, what followed: two years of mystery, an international manhunt, thousands of articles, songs, plays, and, most importantly, the birth of a myth. For this theft, more than any other event, would propel the Mona Lisa to the status of absolute icon, far beyond the art world.
But how did a work already admired by connoisseurs become the Mona Lisa—the one millions of people line up to see every year, as if on pilgrimage? How did that enigmatic smile, painted over five centuries ago, go from a commissioned portrait to a universal symbol? The answer lies partly in that August morning of 1911, but also in everything that came before—and everything that followed.
01The Louvre in 1911: a sleepy museum where you could still touch the masterpieces
If you had visited the Louvre in the early 20th century, you would have struggled to recognize the temple of art we know today. The museum wasn’t yet the sacred space where visitors whisper before works protected by bulletproof glass. No, in 1911, the Louvre resembled a vast warehouse of royal treasures, where security was so lax that an employee could, without much difficulty, take a painting off the wall and walk out with it under his arm.
The galleries were poorly lit, the artworks often hung haphazardly, and the guards—when there were any—were more concerned with pickpockets than art thieves. The Mona Lisa herself was displayed in the Salon Carré, a room so cramped that visitors had to jostle for a glimpse of the canvases. She wasn’t yet protected by a display case, nor even by a rope—you could get within inches of her, touch her, if the urge struck you.
And that’s precisely what Vincenzo Peruggia did that morning. A former Louvre employee, he knew the place like the back of his hand. He knew the guards made their rounds at fixed times, that the galleries were often deserted in the early morning, and, most importantly, that no one would expect such a famous painting to be stolen. His plan was disarmingly simple: he hid in a broom closet the night before, waited for the museum to close, then lifted the Mona Lisa from her frame. With the painting under his arm, he strolled out through a service door, as if he were leaving for lunch.
What’s fascinating is that no one noticed the painting was gone until the next day. The guards, used to seeing the Mona Lisa in her usual spot, didn’t register her absence. Visitors assumed she had been moved for restoration or a temporary exhibition. It wasn’t until the painter Louis Béroud, who had come to sketch the canvas, asked where she was that the alarm was raised.
02Before the theft: a respected work, but far from a star
If the Mona Lisa was already considered a masterpiece before 1911, she had not yet achieved the untouchable icon status she holds today. In artistic circles, her sfumato—that revolutionary technique allowing Leonardo to blend shadows and light without a trace of brushstroke—was admired. Her composition, the delicacy of her details, the enigmatic expression of her model were praised. But she was just one work among many in a museum overflowing with treasures.
At the time, Louvre visitors came primarily to see the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, or Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa. The Mona Lisa attracted mostly connoisseurs, art lovers who recognized Leonardo’s genius. She wasn’t yet the painting people queue for hours to see, nor the face plastered on millions of postcards, coffee mugs, or posters.
Yet she had already begun to gain some notoriety. In the 19th century, Romantic writers had seized upon her, turning her smile into a symbol of mystery and eternity. Théophile Gautier, in a text published in 1855, described her gaze as "an enigma one cannot solve." A few years later, Walter Pater wrote his famous lines: "She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave."
These texts helped forge the Mona Lisa’s legend, but they remained confined to a literate audience. What would truly catapult her into the spotlight was the 1911 theft—and, above all, how the media would seize upon the story.
03The theft that made headlines around the world
When news of the theft broke, it wasn’t just France that was shaken—it was the entire world. Newspapers covered the story with a frenzy reminiscent of today’s biggest media scandals. For weeks, the disappearance of the Mona Lisa dominated front pages, from the United States to Australia, across Europe and Latin America.
The wildest theories circulated. Some accused the Germans, suspecting a plot to weaken France on the eve of World War I. Others pointed to eccentric collectors willing to do anything to possess the canvas. The Italian mafia was even implicated, as was a mysterious "antiquities gang" that had allegedly stolen several works from the Louvre.
The police questioned hundreds of people, including Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire. The poet, who had purchased some Iberian statues stolen from the Louvre years earlier, was briefly suspected. But investigators quickly realized he had nothing to do with the Mona Lisa’s theft.
Meanwhile, the press had a field day. Newspapers published humorous cartoons of the Mona Lisa laughing at the world or hiding in an attic. Songs were written about the theft, plays were staged. Within weeks, the Mona Lisa had become more than a painting: she was a celebrity in her own right, a figure everyone was talking about without ever having seen her.
And then, after two years of mystery, the case was solved in the most unexpected way.
04The Mona Lisa’s return: a patriotic thief and a triumphant homecoming
In December 1913, a Florentine antique dealer named Alfredo Geri received a letter from a certain "Leonardo Vincenzo," offering to sell him the Mona Lisa. Intrigued, Geri agreed to meet the man, who turned out to be Vincenzo Peruggia, the Louvre’s former employee.
Peruggia explained that he had stolen the painting to "return it to Italy," convinced that the Mona Lisa had been looted by Napoleon and rightfully belonged to his homeland. In reality, the canvas had been legally purchased by Francis I after Leonardo’s death and had been part of the French royal collections for centuries. But Peruggia, a staunch nationalist, was certain he was doing the right thing.
When Italian police arrested Peruggia, he became something of a hero in his country. Italian newspapers hailed his "patriotism," and some even suggested he should be decorated for his act. In France, however, the affair provoked outrage. How could a simple laborer steal a national treasure and hide it for two years without getting caught?
Despite the diplomatic tensions, the Mona Lisa was returned to France. And that’s when something extraordinary happened: her homecoming was celebrated as a national, even international, event. For several months, the painting was exhibited in Italy’s greatest cities—Florence, Rome, Milan—before returning to the Louvre. Millions of people came to see her, turning what could have been a simple restitution into an unprecedented triumph.
This Italian tour marked a turning point in the Mona Lisa’s history. For the first time, she was no longer just another artwork: she had become a star, a mass phenomenon, a face whose enigmatic smile everyone wanted to see.
05The smile that conquered the world: from artwork to pop icon
After her return to France, the Mona Lisa was never the same. The 1911 theft had transformed a respected work into a myth, and her Italian tour had made her a global celebrity. But it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that she became the Mona Lisa—the one we know today: a universal symbol, a pop icon, a face found everywhere, from museums to advertisements to internet memes.
In the 1960s, the Louvre agreed to lend the Mona Lisa to the United States for a special exhibition. The trip was a sensation: over a million and a half people queued for hours to catch a glimpse of her smile. Endless lines formed outside the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery in Washington, turning the canvas into a veritable rock star.
Since then, the Mona Lisa has continued to fascinate, inspiring artists, writers, filmmakers, and even advertisers. Marcel Duchamp drew a mustache on her face in his work L.H.O.O.Q., Salvador Dalí reimagined her in a self-portrait, and Andy Warhol turned her into a series of silkscreens, making her image a symbol of pop culture.
Today, she is far more than a painting: she is a cultural phenomenon, a subject of debate, an endless source of inspiration. And yet, despite her fame, she remains shrouded in mystery. Who was the woman who posed for Leonardo? What does her smile mean? And why does she continue to captivate us, more than five centuries after her creation?
06The mystery that will never be solved
Perhaps it’s precisely this mystery that makes the Mona Lisa so unique. Unlike other Renaissance masterpieces, she doesn’t tell a clear story; she doesn’t depict a specific moment in history or mythology. She is, above all, an enigma—a face whose expression shifts depending on the angle, a smile that seems at once sad and mocking, inscrutable and deeply human.
Scientists have spent decades studying the canvas, using the most advanced technologies to unlock its secrets. They’ve discovered that Leonardo revised the composition multiple times, that he initially painted eyebrows and eyelashes before erasing them, and that he used dozens of layers of glaze to create that signature sfumato effect. But despite all these analyses, no one has ever fully explained what makes the Mona Lisa so mesmerizing.
Is it her smile, which seems to change with the viewer’s mood? Is it her gaze, which appears to follow you around the room? Or is it simply the fact that she embodies, better than any other work, the very idea of art—that blend of technique, emotion, and mystery that makes us question, dream, imagine?
Whatever the reason, one thing is certain: the Mona Lisa isn’t done surprising us. And as long as there’s a hint of mystery in her smile, she will continue to fascinate, intrigue, and inspire. Because in the end, that may be the secret of her immortality: she isn’t just a painting. She’s an invitation to see the world differently, to find beauty where others see only the ordinary.
And that, more than anything else, is why she will always be the Mona Lisa.