The real story
Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian glazier who had helped build the painting's protective glass case, slipped into the Louvre early on Monday 21 August 1911, when the museum was closed to the public. He took the panel off the wall, left the frame on a staircase and walked out with the painting under his white work smock. Nobody noticed it was gone until the next day.
Newspapers worldwide printed her face, and crowds lined up to stare at the empty hooks. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested and his friend Picasso was questioned. Peruggia kept the painting in a trunk in his Paris room for over two years, then tried to sell it to a Florence art dealer in December 1913, saying he wanted it back in Italy. He served less than a year in prison.
