File CS-R05 · Unsolved cases · Fact recordFiled 2026-09-18

The 1911 Mona Lisa theft: how the painting was stolen

Vincenzo Peruggia, a handyman who had once worked at the Louvre, took the Mona Lisa off its wall on August 21, 1911, hid it in his Paris apartment for two years, and was caught in December 1913 when he tried to sell it in Florence. He confessed, stood trial, and served seven months in prison. The case is closed, though parts of his own account remain unverified.

What happened

The Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre on the morning of August 21, 1911. Vincenzo Peruggia, a 29-year-old Italian handyman who had briefly worked at the museum helping build the protective glass case that housed the painting, hid inside overnight in a storage closet. He emerged the next morning wearing the white smock issued to Louvre staff, walked to the service stairwell, took the wooden panel out of its case and frame at around 7:15 a.m., wrapped it, and carried it out of the building hidden under his smock.

A day before anyone noticed

Staff did not realize the painting was missing until the next day, Tuesday, August 22, when they found only its empty hooks on the wall. Police pursued numerous leads but could not identify Peruggia. According to National Geographic, he was brought in and interviewed twice in the course of the investigation without being recognized as the thief. He kept the panel hidden in his one-room Paris apartment, inside a wood trunk with a false bottom, for the next two years while the trail went cold.

Two artists under suspicion

The stalled investigation pushed police toward an unrelated Louvre theft ring. Honoré-Joseph Géry-Pieret, who worked as a secretary for the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, had for years been stealing small Iberian sculptures from the museum, and had sold some to a young Pablo Picasso, who used them as models in his own work. When Pieret published a boastful letter about his thefts in the Paris-Journal, investigators traced the connection to Apollinaire and then to Picasso. Under pressure to show progress on the Mona Lisa case, police arrested and questioned both men about the missing painting.

Neither man had any connection to the theft. History.com reports that "they had an alibi and were quickly released," although Picasso was frightened during his detention because he did not want to be expelled from France back to Spain. Peruggia, the actual thief, had no ties to Pieret's ring and played no part in this side of the investigation.

The main theory behind his motive

Peruggia's own explanation, given after his arrest, was patriotism. He said he wanted to return the Mona Lisa to Italy because he believed Napoleon's army had looted it from the country generations earlier. The premise was wrong: the painting was finished in France and bought legally by King Francis I in 1518, long before Napoleon was born. Peruggia is the only source for his own motive, and since the reasoning he gave does not hold up historically, what really drove him is not fully settled by the record.

The recovery in Florence

Peruggia held onto the painting until December 1913, when, using the alias "Leonard," he wrote to Florentine art dealer Alfredo Geri and offered to bring the Mona Lisa back to Italy. Geri brought in the director of the Uffizi Gallery to examine the panel, and once they judged it genuine, they alerted the police. Authorities arrested Peruggia in his hotel room on December 11, 1913. The painting was authenticated, briefly exhibited in Italy, and returned to the Louvre in January 1914.

Where the case stands

Peruggia stood trial in Italy, where he repeated his patriotic defense. The court sentenced him to one year and fifteen days in prison, and he served just seven months before an appeal freed him early. No accomplices were tried, and no wider conspiracy was proven in court. By the ordinary legal measure, the case is closed: a named man was caught, confessed, and was convicted for taking the painting off the Louvre's wall.

The theft did what nothing before it had: it made the Mona Lisa a household name. History.com reports that at least 120,000 people came to see the painting in the first two days after its return, and it now draws an estimated eight million visitors a year. National Geographic credits the 1911 theft and the manhunt that followed as largely responsible for the fame the painting still holds today.

What is still missing

Some gaps remain even in a case that ended in a conviction. The record does not explain how police interviewed Peruggia twice during their investigation without identifying him as the thief. His patriotic motive rests entirely on his own testimony, given after he was already caught, and nothing in the sources reviewed here independently confirms or disproves it. He said he acted alone, and no accomplice was ever tried, but historians cited by NPR say two brothers, Vincenzo and Michele Lancelotti, took part in the theft with him.

Questions people ask

How many times has the Mona Lisa been stolen?

Once, as far as the historical record shows. It disappeared from the Louvre on 21 August 1911 and was recovered more than two years later, when former Louvre worker Vincenzo Peruggia tried to sell it to an Italian art dealer. Later incidents were attacks on the painting, not thefts: acid and a rock in 1956, red paint in 1974, a mug in 2009, cake in 2022 and soup in 2024.