The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity

The reader is asked to “imagine a palazzo” (1) in Florence in 1503, then a man and a woman. The man is Leonardo da Vinci, who should have been a notary but became a painter. The woman is Lisa Gherardini, who married and had children despite coming from a family unable to provide a dowry for her. Her family became prosperous enough to “commission a painting” (1).

Sometime after sitting for the portrait, Lisa would watch her city be invaded and destroyed. Later, she would join a convent. Leonardo would flee the city, traveling across Italy and eventually into France. His painting would make Lisa “the most recognizable face in the world” (1). As a painting, she could never die, but she could be kidnapped.

On Monday, August 21, 1911, a man in a white smock walked out of the Louvre Museum with the Mona Lisa. The world was changing at “breakneck” speed (7), and new inventions would shape what happened next.

The Louvre had been a medieval fortress, then a palace. After the French Revolution, it became a museum. It was cavernous, full of “nooks and crannies” (5). Earlier in 1911, a journalist exposed the museum’s poor security by hiding in the museum overnight.