In the wake of the high-profile trial came even more quixotic, conspiratorial, and occasionally ridiculous interpretations of the theft. When reality proves either insufficiently romantic, or appears to cloud over some darker truth, the public, and particularly overenthusiastic journalists, tend to add spice to the pot.
The Thefts of the Mona Lisa was originally released in 2011 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the theft of “the world’s most famous painting” in 1911. I’ve read an advanced copy of a rerelease (slated to drop in early 2024), and while author Noah Charney does include recent scholarship concerning the painting (in particular, Pascal Cotte’s LAM scans that seem to reveal hidden versions of the painting beneath the one we all recognise), his basic thesis is much the same: Ever since the Mona Lisa was famously stolen from the Louvre by Italian nationalist Vincenzo Peruggia (who erroneously believed that the painting had been looted from his home country by Napoleon), conspiracy theorists have suggested that what was returned to France in 1913 was a fake or a copy — or maybe the Nazis stole the painting during WWII and it was then that the French government decided to start displaying a fake — and it is to correct the “fake news” crowd that Charney outlines the known and verifiable history of the work. People looking for a scholarly treatment of this story should note that in an afterword, Charney writes: This book is conversationally written and meant to replicate my lectures. And it really does have a conversational/casual tone that sometimes jars with folksy vernacular. He also notes that since he relied heavily on books that he considers to be the best researched works on the history of Leonardo da Vinci and the Mona Lisa, he doesn't feel the need to quote primary sources here (directing the reader to investigate the footnotes of those books he references). Still: This is a fascinating story, well presented, and I’m happy to have read it. Probably a 3.5 stars read; happy to round up. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
It would have been all but impossible to “shop” the Mona Lisa and find a buyer. It was simply too famous. That left a number of possibilities that various newspapers put forward: first, theft by a lunatic, who had no particular motivation; second, theft on commission by a criminal collector; third, theft as practical joke, perhaps by a journalist looking for a scoop; fourth, theft by a political group hoping to blackmail the French government; and the most bizarre of all, fifth, theft to sell forgeries to unsuspecting criminal art collectors. What seemed to occur to no one was the real motivation: an ideologically driven theft to repatriate the painting to Italy.
The man who did steal the Mona Lisa in 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia, was no criminal mastermind: Tired of being treated like a hick foreigner, Peruggia was a tradesman who emigrated to Paris as a teenager, and when he got a job at the Louvre, he recognised how easy it would be to remove and repatriate the great Italian portrait to his home country. Charney explains how lax the security was at the Louvre at the time, outlines the amateur moves of the thief, and details the hapless response of the Parisian police force. It was fascinating for the author to tie in the suspicion that fell on Pablo Picasso (who apparently had commissioned the theft of some ancient Iberian sculptures from the Louvre, revealed around the same time, which would heavily influence his painting), and Charney eventually shares everything that is known of da Vinci’s life and work (he spent much more time as a military engineer than as an artist). I appreciated that Charney explains that there were many inconsistencies in Peruggia’s story (which feeds into conspiracy theories), as well as explaining the inconsistencies around the French government’s tracking of the Mona Lisa during WWII (which really feeds the conspiracy theories), but even the officials from Florence’s Uffizi Museum (to whom Peruggia wanted to give the Mona Lisa after two years of unsuspected possession) had detailed photographs that showed the characteristic “craquelure” (cracks in the paint) present in the surface of the Mona Lisa, and good enough for them seems good enough to me.
Beyond proving that the original Mona Lisa is hanging in the Louvre today, Charney seems to have a secondary purpose in debunking the popular culture image of an art thief as some Thomas Crown/Dr. No gentleman-thief collector of fine art. As he writes, “every year anywhere from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand art objects (20 -30 000 in Italy alone) are reported stolen worldwide”, and this is mostly by criminal gangs and terrorist organisations (Art crime is ranked behind only drug and arms in terms of its value as an international criminal trade commodity. When planning the 9/ 11 attacks, Mohammed Atta tried first to buy a plane by selling looted Afghani antiquities in Germany.) And there’s something philosophically interesting about countless artworks going missing every year to fund criminal activity while the general public only worries about the few works that have made an impression on popular culture: and from Nat King Cole crooning soulfully about his Mona Lisa to Dan Brown’s potboiler (in which he egregiously writes that the Mona Lisa is painted on canvas instead of a poplar panel), no other painting seems to have made this much of an impression on our collective psyches.
So, there is only one Mona Lisa by Leonardo. It is on display at the Louvre. The truth behind it is plenty intriguing, including real, demonstrable secrets hidden beneath its surface — there’s no need to buy into the ooga-booga conspiracy theories.
I have been lucky enough to stand before the glass-encased Mona Lisa at the Louvre twice — once at 18 and once at 50 — and both times, I was stricken in her presence. What I saw was masterful and captivating, and if it ever turned out that what I saw was a fake or a copy, I don’t know if that would downgrade the experience in my memories. Even so: Charney — who is the expert in this — reassures me that there’s no reason to doubt the provenance of this incredible portrait. I am happy to have read this account of its fascinating history (even if some of the “ooga-booga” writing didn’t delight me).
