I caught up to some NYT editions I hadn't read when I went on vacation, and came across Mr. Roberts's October 8 piece yesterday.
Mr. Roberts tells us that October 8 marks the anniversary of the birth—and the death—of Vincenzo Peruggia, born in Italy in 1881 who passed away in 1925. Vincenzo is famous for stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum in Paris, spiriting it to Italy, and then because the police finally got to him, allowing it to be reclaimed by the authorities and restored to its place back in the Louvre less than three years later.
The Mona Lisa smile has been sung about by Nat King Cole: "You're so like the lady with the mystic smile." It's been described with various adjectives but since I never thought much of the painting myself, I'll add that it is "wooden." Proof of that is enhanced when Mr. Roberts tells that da Vinci painted what is probably one of the 10 most revered paintings in the world on "a 30-by-21 inch 18-pound poplar plank" of wood.
I saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in 1964. There was a healthy scrum of people also looking at it at the time, and there was a guard and a perimeter of velvet rope to keep onlookers back a safe distance. I don't remember if all that was before or after an agitated person having a bad day took a hammer to the glass and somewhat damaged the painting. The painting has been stolen or vandalized five times. During the museum's open hours, the artwork is always singularly guarded.
But back in 1911, Vincenzo Perrugia, a housepainter and glazier, who worked at the museum and who might have had a hand in then securing the artwork behind glass, hid somewhere, and when the museum was closed and the guards were not otherwise directly guarding the portrait, removed the 200-pound frame from the wall, slipped the portrait out, and with the help of a passing plumber, unlocked an exit door and made off for his hotel room with Mona under his worker's smock.
Vincenzo kept it in a trunk at his Paris apartment for two years before getting the portrait to another apartment he had in Florence, Italy. Unable to keep his possession of the painting a total secret, he wrote to an antiques dealer offering a viewing of the piece for $100,000.
Big mistake. The police arrested Vincenzo at his apartment, took possession of the artwork, and managed to convict Vincenzo of the theft, whereupon he spent seven months in prison.
Before the painting was returned to the French—the legal owners—the Italians took pleasure is having the painting make a tour of Italy. After all, part of Vincenzo's motive is stealing the painting was that since it was painted by an Italian, da Vinci, it should be in Italy, not France, despite who really owned it.
Aside from learning that the portrait is painted on wood, we learn that the subject is a Florentine noblewoman, Lisa Del Gioconda, the wife of a silk merchant. Mona it turns out is an Italian honorific for noble, or aristocratic. Lisa was not a peasant.
But was the painting really da Vinci's? The day after the theft the NYT reported what became worldwide news—that the Mona Lisa had been snatched from the Louvre.
The Times headline to the story tells us 'La Gioconda' is stolen...Masterpiece of Lionardo da Vinci Vanishes from Lourvre..."
Is "Lionardo" a typo for "Leonardo?" Or, is all what Vincenzo did was make off with a poorly signed fake?
Can his case be reopened based on a technicality and his conviction purged? Stranger things have happened.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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