For two years the most recognizable painting in the world sat inside a trunk in a Paris boarding house while France sealed its borders and the police chased everyone but the thief. The culprit was an Italian workman who'd been hired by the Louvre itself — and the global frenzy over the empty wall is the very thing that turned a quiet Leonardo into the most famous image on Earth.
CBS walks through the morning in August 1911 when the Louvre discovered an empty hook where the world's most famous painting should have been. Start here for the shape of the crime.
The audacious mechanics of the heist: a workman lifts the painting off the wall, slips it under his smock, and strolls out through a door a plumber happened to unlock for him.
The thief himself: an Italian handyman who had actually been hired to build the painting's protective glass case, and who kept her hidden in a trunk in his Paris boarding room for two years.
The investigation went spectacularly sideways. Police arrested the poet Apollinaire, who implicated his friend Picasso — and a terrified young Picasso denied even knowing him. Neither had anything to do with it.
PBS reconstructs the two-year manhunt from original police and court files — the sealed borders, the false leads, and the strange motive of a man who believed he was repatriating a stolen Italian treasure.
Absolute History's full documentary on the theft and its unraveling in Florence in 1913, when Peruggia tried to sell her to an art dealer who promptly called the police.
The twist nobody expected: before 1911 the Mona Lisa was just one Leonardo among many. The theft, the global headlines, and the triumphant return turned her into an icon. The crime created the masterpiece.