The Heist that Made the Mona Lisa Famous
The theft of the Mona Lisa has been called the “art heist of the century,” but the caper itself was fairly rudimentary. On the evening of Sunday, August 20, 1911, a small, mustachioed man entered the Louvre museum in Paris and made his way to the Salon Carré, where the Da Vinci painting was housed alongside several other masterworks. Security in the museum was lax, so the man found it easy to stow away inside a storage closet. He remained hidden there until the following morning when the Louvre was closed and foot traffic was light. At around 7:15 a.m., he emerged clad in a white apron—the same garment worn by the museum’s employees. After checking to see if the coast was clear, the thief strode up to the Mona Lisa, plucked it off the wall and carried it to a nearby service stairwell, where he removed its wooden canvas from a protective glass frame.
The lone hitch in the thief’s plan came when he tried to exit the stairwell into a courtyard. Finding the door locked, he placed the Mona Lisa—now wrapped in a white sheet—on the floor and tried to take apart the doorknob. He made little progress before one of the Louvre’s plumbers appeared on the stairwell. Rather than apprehending him, however, the plumber took the man for a trapped co-worker and assisted him in opening the door. With a friendly thank you, the thief made his getaway. Just a few moments later, he waltzed out of the Louvre with one of the world’s most valuable paintings tucked beneath his apron.
