Authors: R.A. Scotti
Mona Lisa left the Louvre a work of art. She returned an icon. The private seduction of Walter Pater had become the public seduction of the masses.
IN AUGUST
1911, when Mona Lisa vanished,
The New York Times
predicted:
Whoever it was who stole Leonardo da Vinci's la Gioconda or Mona Lisa from the Louvre is sure of a place in history when his name comes out. He is sure of an extraordinary place, too. It is not possible to locate the general who fought the greatest battle since the world was made, or the statesman who framed the greatest law, or the author who wrote the greatest book; but it will always be possible henceforth to locate the thief who committed the greatest theft
.
The opposite proved true. Vincenzo Peruggia was not brought to trial until June 4, 1914, and by then the drama had played out.
La Gioconda
had moved on, and Florentines had moved on, too. After the first euphoric flush, spontaneous outpourings of awe and affection waned. No more gifts of cigarettes and
dolci
for Peruggia. Mona Lisa was back in Paris and hanging safely in her old spot, surrounded on all sides by Napoleon's plunder. Without her luminous glow, Vincenzo Peruggia was on his own, parading before the world in the emperor's new clothes. It was not a prepossessing sight.
Whether he was Mona Lisa's abductor or her savior, Peruggia was a disappointment. In the pantheon of great criminals real or imaginary, he was an embarrassment. Peruggia was not a suave escape artist in white tie and tails, like Adam Worth, who spirited away Gainsborough's
Duchess of Devonshire
under the nose of Scotland Yard. He was not a cerebral nemesis like Professor James Moriarty, “the Napoleon of crime,”
who matched wits with Sherlock Holmes. He was not even the shrewdly elusive Flambeau, “the colossus of crime who ran down the Rue de Rivoli with a policeman under each arm,” whom Father Brown was forever tailing. If Peruggia had arrived twenty years later, he could have played the comic foil in the frothy musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (“Sono Tonetti. It rhymes with spaghetti”).
The stunning denouement had dwindled into tawdry melodrama, and the final act was an anticlimax. By the time Peruggia came to trial, Prefect Lépine had been retired for more than a year, and Alphonse Bertillon was dead. France did not press for harsh treatment. The government did not want to resurrect memories of the botched investigation or make the thief a martyr in Italy. France had not even prosecuted Peruggia's accomplices, citing a lack of evidence. Without French pressure, Italy was loath to be too severe with the man who had brought Mona Lisa home, at least for a surprise visit. Relations between the two countries were more cordial than they had been in some time, although the warm feelings would be short-lived.
A psychiatrist appointed by the court to determine Peruggia's mental state testified that he was exceedingly dumb. “Dumb like a fox” would have been more apt. The Italian investigators had amassed convincing evidence against him. They had gone to his hometown near Como, questioned his father and brothers, and discovered that his motive was less than pure. Before the theft, he had boasted to his family that he would soon be a rich man. The prosecution also uncovered evidence that Peruggia had tried to sell the portrait several times. Before contacting Geri, he had approached the London dealer Joseph Duveen, the American millionaire-collector J. P. Morgan, and art brokers in Paris and Naples. Not one of them had alerted the police. Later, Duveen admitted, “I would sooner have gone around with a stick of dynamite in my
pocket for the rest of my life than have had any knowledge of that affair.” Morgan, who protested so vociferously that he had never been offered Mona Lisa, had died the previous year.
In spite of the evidence against him, Peruggia kept to his part, never deviating from the script, if script there was. He put on another flawless performance as “the avenger of Italy's wrongs.” Looking confident but modest in a gray suit, winged collar, and black tie, he took the witness stand and, with an attitude of aggrieved innocence, told his story to the judge.
The misadventure began at about seven o'clock on the morning of August 21, 1911, when Peruggia presented himself at the door of the Louvre with the other workmen, wearing his white smock:
One morning I joined my fellow decorators at the Louvre, exchanged a few words with them, and quietly stole away. I was wearing the same long white workman's blouse as they did and attracted no attention and was asked no questions. I managed to get to the Salon Carré without being seen. The room was deserted. There hung the painting that is one of our great works. Mona Lisa smiled down on me. In a moment, I had snatched her from the wall. I carried her to the staircase, took off the frame, slipped the painting under my blouse, and left
con lapiu grande disinvoltura
—with the greatest nonchalance. It was all done in a few seconds.
Peruggia never budged from his story line when the judge cross-examined him.
“Why did you commit the theft?”
“All the Italian paintings which are in the Louvre have been stolen.”
“Where did you find this out?”
“From books and photographs.”
Peruggia's answer seemed canny. The idea that he had spent his free time poring over art-history books in the Bibliothèque
Nationale required a willed suspension of disbelief. The judge questioned him on his alleged motive:
“Why did you write to tell your family you had finally made your fortune?”
“Romantic words, Your Honor” was his cool reply.
“Why sell her if your motive was altruistic?”
“I was anxious to ensure a comfortable old age for my parents. Besides that, I felt I must take myself away from the influence of that haunting smile. I sometimes wondered in those two and a half years whether or not I should burn the picture, fearing I should go mad.”
“But you tried to sell the painting in London,” the judge countered.
“This is a misunderstanding.” Peruggia made the correction firmly, without betraying any hint of rancor. “In London, I went to the shop of an antiques dealer for advice on how to return Mona Lisa to Italy. The dealer did not take me seriously. He said I surely must be speaking of a copy, and I left. Had I wished to sell the painting, I would not have gone to the trouble that I did. I took the painting for Italy, and I wanted it returned to Italy. I waited until the tumult from the newspapers had quieted down before coming to Italy.”
Henry Duveen had told a very different story, and the judge continued to question Peruggia's motive.
“How did you get the idea to propose the sale to the art dealer Geri?”
“While reading a newspaper, my eye caught his name, and so I thought of turning to him to make a gift of
la Gioconda
to Italy.”
“Gift? But when you first met him, you proposed getting a payment of five hundred thousand lire from the Italian government.”
“Who says this? Geri?” Peruggia snapped back. “It was he who suggested getting five hundred thousand, and we would
share the money. He told me to ask Poggi for the money and to stick to this amount.”
Peruggia's outburst seemed the most genuine moment in his testimony. The judge pressed further.
“Why did you offer the painting to a dealer rather than to the director of the Uffizi Gallery?”
“I didn't think.”
“Did you expect a reward from the Italian government?”
“Certainly. I heard talk of millions, and I expected that Italy would present me with something which, for a modest family such as mine, would have been a fortune.”
Peruggia, only momentarily off-script, returned to his by now familiar role as an aggrieved man, misunderstood and maligned, but neither bitter nor bowed. Either he had come to believe his own fiction or a fiction that had been fed to him, or he was a consummate actor. A series of witnesses followed.
The psychiatrist testified that he had examined Peruggia intensely over several months to determine his degree of culpability. Because the accused was “intellectually deficient,” he was only partly responsible for his actions, the psychiatrist said. Police chief Tarantelli described Peruggia's previous efforts to sell the painting and repeated the boasts he had made to his family. Uffizi director Poggi described Peruggia's “quiet and calm” demeanor when he turned over the painting. Geri, the last to take the stand, recounted their negotiations.
As each witness testified, Peruggia listened with the same apparent lack of concern that he had displayed when he surrendered the painting. The
Rome Tribune
reported:
To observe him, one would think he had nothing to do with the trial. He displayed temper when he felt the witnesses were not testifying accurately. But it was a superficial display. Not for one moment was he disturbed. He has taken part in the debate, speaking at some length and speaking
frankly, expressing himself in well-chosen phrases, punctuating his words with moderate and gentlemanly gestures. His words always give the impression of sincerity. Either he has never believed that he committed a crime, or he has indulged so much in autosuggestion that he has lost all sense of the importance of it
.
In his closing argument, the prosecutor described a clever crime committed by a convicted felon for personal gain, not for the glory of Italy. Citing Peruggia's two convictions in France, he asked for a minimum three-year sentence.
Peruggia's lawyers, Renzo Carena and Ferdinando Targetti, each gave a summation. One argued that the trial was illegal. Italy had no jurisdiction because the crime had been committed in a foreign country, and since France never asked for his extradition, Peruggia should be a free man.
The other made an emotional appeal to all Italians. Peruggia was a loving son who had been forced to seek work in a hostile country to help his family. In France, he had been ridiculed as a “macaroni,” his tools were stolen, and his wine was salted—all because he was Italian. His history might be flawed, but his heart was true. He believed Napoleon had stolen Mona Lisa, and he was avenging the dishonor. Peruggia should be returned to his family, just as he had returned
la Gioconda
to her homeland. He was not a professional thief. In fact, his actions after the theft were so stupid, they proved the psychiatrist's diagnosis that he was intellectually deficient.
The defense concluded with a stirring plea: “By accepting our conclusions, you will have listened to the voices that are coming from every part of Italy, where there is nobody who desires the condemnation of the accused.” As the defense rested, the spectators exploded in wild applause, and Peruggia wept. The court adjourned until the following day.
When the trial resumed in the morning, the courtroom was
overflowing. The sympathy of the Italian public was aroused once more, but the jurors were unmoved. After deliberating for just two hours, they found Vincenzo Peruggia guilty as charged. He was sentenced to one year and fifteen days.
According to one newspaper report, the thief listened to his sentence with a smile as enigmatic as Mona Lisa's. As he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, he was overheard saying, “It could have been worse.”
Six weeks later, the defense attorneys appealed his sentence. During those few weeks, the political climate in Europe had changed dramatically. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo. France sympathized with the Serbs, Italy with the Austrians, and the warm feelings between the countries evaporated.
Peruggia's attorneys argued that no one had been hurt by the Mona Lisa affair, and many had been helped. The painting had been returned safely and in excellent condition, the Italians had enjoyed a brief encounter with
la Gioconda
, and the French had been shown how poorly their art was protected.
On July 28, Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia. It was the first salvo of World War I. The next day, Vincenzo Peruggia's case was closed. His sentence was reduced to seven months and nine days. Because of time served, he was released immediately, and in some confusion. The Mona Lisa thief was in an unfamiliar city and penniless once more—he turned out the pockets of his trousers to prove it as he left the courtroom. With no idea what to do or where to go, Peruggia returned to the scene of his arrest. At the front door of the Albergo Tripoli-Italia, now the Hotel la Gioconda, Mona Lisa smiled at “Leonardo” again. Her likeness was painted on the wall at the entrance with a sign:
HERE
LA GIOCONDA
WAS RECOVERED
.
Peruggia eventually returned home to Dumenza, where he
was welcomed as a hero. He joined the Italian army, serving honorably through the war. In 1921 Peruggia married, moved back to France, and opened a paint store in Haute-Savoie. He died there in September 1947, just shy of his sixty-sixth birthday.
Today, a soaring art market and the continuing problem of museum security have made art theft the third most prevalent crime in the world, surpassed only by international smuggling and drug trafficking. The risk is small, the potential gain is tremendous, and if the thief is caught, the punishment is still minimal.
Vincenzo Peruggia, aka Leonardo, served less than a year for pulling off the most audacious art heist in history. He never committed another crime, and he never confessed who was behind the pinch felt round the world. But the idea that he was the lone thief seems implausible.
A guest worker in France, unsophisticated and not very bright, with a couple of minor scrapes on his police blotter, masterminds the art theft of the ages. For more than two years, he makes only desultory efforts to capitalize on his crime. At first the thief says he acted alone, and then he implicates two accomplices, simple men much like himself. Although he is briefly lionized, he leaves jail without enough lire to buy a cappuccino and never attempts another theft. Is this the modus operandi of a master criminal?
Peruggia was a good housepainter, but he had no education and no knowledge of art. Where were the books about Napoleon and his plundering? None were found in Peruggia's apartment or in his travel case, and it is absurd to imagine the semiliterate Italian in the Bibliotheque Nationale, poring over history tomes written in French. Peruggia's own family never
believed he stole Mona Lisa alone. Someone had incited him to commit the crime with the promise of wealth or the lure of patriotism.