[Music] When I was an undergraduate in college, I took your entry-level art history survey course, Art History 101, if you will. In it, I learned all of the basics. The meaning of the word "Kiriskyro" had to identify three types of capitals on an ancient griko Roman column, and what made the impressionist different from the post-impressionists, despite the obvious fact that the post-impressionists came later. But one day, I learned something rather shocking. My smart, level-headed professor led us through all the details about one of the most famous works of art on the planet, if not the most famous. Its revolutionary use of perspective, the body positioning of the woman represented, and, most interestingly, the theories about the identity of that woman. She is so intriguing what with those slightly hooded eyes, and especially that mysterious smile. My professor said, "You can see her yourself if you visit the Looves Museum in Paris." But then she paused, and after a breath, she whispered, "But, of course, the Mona Lisa on display is a fake." Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. They might remember childhood field trips to museums stuffed with cranky old women, deathly silent galleries, and dusty golden frames hanging on the wall. But sometimes, the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, crazier, or even more fun than you can imagine. Art history is full of murder, intrigue, feisty women, rebellious men, crime, insanity, and so much more. And today, we are going to tackle one of the most famous art thefts in the history of the world, and its possible impact on a Renaissance masterpiece. Exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in art history, this is the Art Curious Podcast. I'm Jennifer Dassel. Standing in front of the Mona Lisa today is no doubt a crazy experience. At the Looves Museum, the painting, which is smaller than you can imagine at 30 inches high by 20 inches wide, hangs in a climatized compartment which keeps its temperature steady at a cool 43 degrees Fahrenheit and a perfect 50 percent humidity behind a bullet-proof glass that is one and a half inches thick. Beyond that, museum goers are kept behind a barrier of several feet. Finally, our modern age dictates that if we don't snap a selfie in front of something, we never saw or experienced it, so add in hundreds of iPhones all above heads. This is the truth of the matter. You can't really see Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece very well. But this fact doesn't stop the millions of visitors who brave the labyrinthine corridors of the Louvre in order to attempt to view it. Indeed, a museum index report released on CNN in 2016 noted that the Louvre is the world's most visited museum, welcoming just shy of 9 million visitors in 2015 alone. And of those visitors, roughly 80 percent come to the Louvre specifically to see the Mona Lisa or La Joconde as she's called in French. So if the Louvre is the world's top museum, the Mona Lisa then is the world's most visited work of art. So really, what's so great about this small wooden panel of a slightly homely lady with an extra large forehead, nonexistent eyebrows, and a slight smirk? Well, there's surely a lot that's great about her, which we can get into shortly. But for me, the interest is something entirely more thrilling. What if the world's most famous work of art isn't an original Leonardo? But before we get into that question, we need a little background. Leonardo da Vinci is the truest embodiment of the Renaissance man if there ever was one. Not only did he actually live during the Renaissance, that European golden age, but his interests were vast and they ran deep. He had his hand in everything from painting and sculpture to architecture, music, engineering, literature, math, botany, astronomy, and paleontology, just to name a selection of his hobbies. And on top of all of that, he was an inventor, credited with coming up with some of the first plausible concepts for human-powered flight, scuba gear, and armored cars, for example. The quickie version of his life reads something like this. Leonardo was born in 1452 in the Vinci region of Italy near Florence, hence his name, which literally means Leonardo of Vinci. His early interest in art led him to apprentice in the studio of the Florentine painter, Andrea del Verocchio, who, as legend has it, decided never to paint again after witnessing his students talent, which was far superior to his own. This legend probably isn't 100% true, but boy does it sure make a good story. After he left Verocchio's studio in 1478, Leonardo spent a few years working on academic commissions for rich and famous Florentines, including the powerful Medici family, before traveling onwards to Milan, where he stayed through the end of the 15th century. Here, he continued to pattern his time as he had in Florence, completing various projects of various natures for wealthy clients such as Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. This was the reality of European art at this junction at time. Only the rich or the church could afford to commission artwork, so Leonardo did what he had to do, and he sought patrons to support his creations. He worked for Duke's, Popes, and finally Kings, and in the process he formed some of his best works of art, the Last Sapper, the Madonna of the Rocks, the Virgin and Childless Saint Dan, and John the Baptist. But of course, there is one painting that stands far above the others in the public imagination. Generally, it is believed that Leonardo began painting the Mona Lisa in either 1503 or 1504 after he moved back to Florence. Throughout the years, there have been various arguments as to the identity of the subject. My favorite, by the way, is that it's a self-portrait of Leonardo in drag, but that is definitely a podcast for another day. The generally accepted identification is that it is a portrait of Lisa Gerardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant named Francesco Del Giocondo, hence the Mona Lisa's actual or official Italian 8-name, La Gioconda, which then translates to the French La Gioconde. The majority of the painting was probably completed prior to 1507. According to Giorgio Vazzare, a contemporary of Leonardo's who is primarily known today as a somewhat inaccurate scholar and artistic biographer, Leonardo "lingered over it for four years and then left it unfinished." Interestingly enough, the painting never left the artist's possession during his lifetime. Even after Leonardo moved France to work under King Francis I in 1516, he brought the painting along with him. Some art historians even claim that he may have tinkered with the painting all the way through 1517, a full decade and a half after he began it. Upon Leonardo's death in 1519, the Mona Lisa, along with Leonardo's other possessions, was inherited by one of the artist's pupils before King Francis ultimately purchased the painting. Francis displayed the painting at his palace in Fountain Blow, where it remained until King Louis XIV moved it to the famed Palace of Versailles in the late 17th century. Luckily, Mona survived the violence of the French Revolution, and she was briefly given a place of honor in Napoleon's bedroom until she was finally relocated to her current home, the Louvre in 1804. Originally yet another regal palace, the Louvre was converted to the State Museum of France in 1793, and the rest, as they say, is history. Why did Leonardo hold on to that work for so long? We may never know the importance of this piece for him, but I can't speak to the importance of the painting from an aesthetic perspective, so hold on to your hats for a brief art historical tutorial. First of all, it's convincing and a non-idealized representation of an individual, a flesh and blood person who actually lived. She's no goddess. She's frankly kind of odd looking, and during the Renaissance, which was all about the idealism of the human body, this was new and different. Another breakthrough is Leonardo's use of atmospheric perspective. The technique used to create a haziness that renders distance in a more naturalistic way. Basically, you can describe atmospheric perspective like this. The further away an object or landscape is, the blurrier and less distinctive becomes to the eye. Leonardo was a master of this, as well as Fumato, which is an Italian term that describes the masterly technique of combining tones and colors so subtly that they blend without noticeable lines, edges, transitions. The core.
corners of Mona Lisa's mouth and eyes speak to this, and that subtle smokiness only enhances her mystery. So there you have it. This strange and intriguing painting, a pride of France and display of technical prowess, enjoyed a peaceful life in the greatest museum in the world beginning in the early 1800s. Well, peaceful, that is. Until a century later, when suddenly, it was gone. On the morning of Tuesday, August 22, 1911, a painter named Louis Baroude walked into the Louvre to study the masterworks and to seek artistic inspiration. Like his colleagues, he sought permission from the Louvre to copy paintings in the permanent collection, which was an activity that the museum encouraged. And really, the Louvre was perhaps a little too permissive, letting artists store their paints and easels overnight in the galleries and in nearby closets. The one rule in terms of copying a painting was that the artist's reproduction could not be the same size as the original. This single guideline was the only real step the museum took to prevent art forgery. Louis Baroude intended to copy Leonardo's little painting, sure, but it wasn't any reason to prioritize the selection. You see, the Mona Lisa was famous, especially in France, but her reputation was nowhere near the international superstar status that we have assigned to her today. In fact, the painting received little attention until the second half of the 19th century, when the romantics, those artists who sought feeling and emotion over realism, became enamored with Mona Lisa's oh-so-saductive smile. Only then did the work begin to receive significant acclaim and praise. After to that point, it was a Renaissance masterpiece, but only one among many at the Louvre. At the dawn of the 20th century, she was popular enough that she started receiving her own fan mail from admirers all around France. As her fame grew, suitors brought her flowers, and some even attempted to propose marriage to this anatomic object. But after a woman slashed a painting by the neoclassical artist Jean-Augou St Dominique Ung, in 1907, officials determined that Mona, as well as other priceless works, was far too accessible and that greater measures needed to be taken in order to protect her. And so, especially formulated glass box and custom frame were fitted around the painting. But this preparation was apparently not safe enough. When Louis Baroude entered the gallery known as the Saloncaure, that August morning, he noticed something rather odd. The Mona Lisa was missing, and in its place were only four iron pegs, which was the backing where the wooden panel was hung. Baroude was surprised and sought clarification from museum employees. Where it was Mona today, he asked. Their responses, shrugs and claims of ignorance, surely did not bode well for the safety of the Louvre's treasures at that time. In the head of security, note that he believed the work had simply been removed in order to be photographed for publicity purposes. This, as you might guess, turned out to be an incorrect assumption, and I can only hope that that man was very quickly relieved of his security position. After it was confirmed that no one in the Louvre knew of the paintings were about the horrible realization dawned. The Mona Lisa had been stolen, and it's whereabouts were unknown. I can only imagine the thoughts running through the mind of museum officials. At first, the harbourde, the naïve, hoped that the panel had simply been removed and left lying in a nearby gallery. So the Louvre closed its doors to the public to undertake an interior search, calling in a sizable court of policemen to comb the galleries for the painting, or at the very least to find some clues to its disappearance. The closure that Tuesday stretched into a full week of intense scrutiny. During the search, museum employees were alerted to stay calm and above all to not alert the newspapers. The Louvre didn't want to alarm the public, but just as importantly, it didn't want to face the embarrassment of the shocking revelation that its security measures were unbelievably lax. Of course, people quickly took notice of the closure, and the public indeed began clamoring for the reasons behind the barricading of the greatest museum in the world. The cat was then out of the bag, and the international press ran with the story. The news was trumpeted across the western world. Mona missing, detective Sikhs' soul and painting, no clues yet uncovered. The interior search of the Louvre failed to turn up the painting, but it did turn up something, a protective glass box, and a discarded frame emblazoned with the painting's title. The worst was then confirmed. Mona Lisa had been removed from her frame and then removed from the Louvre, and the thief, or thieves, had by this time had enough of a head start that Mona could be anywhere in the world. What kind of leads or ideas did the police have about those responsible for the theft? Well, at the beginning, they had too many. As soon as word got out that the painting was gone, everyone in Paris wanted to get in on the action. Local police stations were flooded with tips, most contradicting one another, many possibly falsified some paranoid, and then came the supposed sightings of Mona herself. The painting was found on a train in Belgium, spotted in Holland, and was assumed to be on a steamer bound for America like so many immigrants of the day. Naturally, conspiracy theories abounded too. The one I like best is that the theft of Mona was a vast cover-up instigated by the Louvre's curators, because the painting had been irrevocably damaged during a botched conservation effort. So to hide their embarrassment over the destruction of a Renaissance masterpiece, the curators supposedly hid the original in the basement of the Louvre, claiming it had been stolen. Only temporary, until it could be replaced by a suitably believable copy. Hmm, a suitably believable copy. Keep that idea in mind, because we are definitely going to circle back to it. Eventually, Louvre officials and police came to the same conclusion upon studying the discarded frame in the glass box, whoever stole the painting new art. Had a hold it, had a separate panel from his frame and backing, had it protected, and had a sneak it away without being noticed. After a few fits and starts, they began narrowing their long list of suspects, finally circling in on a particular group of friends. An artsy gang led by the poet, writer and art critic, Guillermo Polonere, and his close pal, a short, sworey, and moody kettle and pader, named Pablo Picasso. A Polonere and Picasso were no strangers to scandal involving art theft. Around the same time period, both were questioned regarding a robbery of several small statues, also from the Louvre's collection. It turned out that the theft was actually undertaken by an acquaintance of a Polonere, who nicked artworks occasionally as a means of pure entertainment. But when it was discovered that Picasso had actually ended up with a couple of the stolen figurines, it seemed like only a small step further to indict him of being involved with the theft of Dermona. Indeed, Picasso had purchased the statuettes from the Polonere's associate, but he also clearly turned a blind eye to the inscriptions on the bottom of each sculpture that read "property of the Louvre in big bold letters." Let's be honest, that is some truly sketchy behavior. So both Picasso and a Polonere were brought in for questioning and were detained. A Polonere was even briefly arrested, and under the stress of the situation, they did what many others do in similar interrogation situations. They metaphorically threw each other under the bus. They are claimed that Picasso knew of the painting's location. Locally, however, it did become obvious that their claims were unsubstantiated fabrications, and neither man could be connected to the missing Leonardo panel in any way. They were quickly released from custody, but as you might imagine, a Polonere and Picasso's friendship was never the same again. In the past, the Polonere was called "Shannon Maldonado", and the artist's work was called "Yaui Lajakaopan Perusta". The exhibition was held in the exhibition hall, where the exhibition hall was held in the first place. It was held in the hall, where we were able to see the exhibition. All the visitors were surprised by the presence of the exhibition hall, including the exhibition hall, in the "Dashboard". The exhibition hall was held in the "Shopify Piste" in the "Comes" area. The exhibition hall was held in the "Shannon Maldonado", where the artist's work was held in the "Yaui Lajakaopan Perusta". The exhibition hall was held in the "Shopify Piste" in the first place, where the exhibition hall was held in the first place. We were able to see the exhibition hall in the first place, where the exhibition hall was held in the first place. All the visitors were surprised by the presence of the exhibition hall, including the "Dashboard". The exhibition hall was held in the "Comes" area in the "Comes" area.
If there is one upside to the terrible theft, it is this. The Louvre experienced a massive uptick in the number of visitors, as thousands crowded the Salon Carre to get a look at the spot where Mona Lisa used to be displayed. Waves of tourists rubberneck to see Lecron D'Am today, and over a hundred years ago, people did the same thing in order to glimpse literally nothing. Basically of course, the novelty of this nothingness wore off for both the crowds and the museum, and Mona's former post was quickly filled in with Raphael's famous portrait of the Renaissance writer Baldassari Castellione. A fitting choice, really, since Raphael's composition was inspired by that of the Mona Lisa. So Mona was not forgotten, but as the month's pass without signs of her or her captors, all of the world began to lose hope. In late 1912, Francis Deputy Minister of Fine Arts reported, quote, "There is no round to hope that the Mona Lisa will ever resume her place at the Louvre." Such a world-renowned work of art could never be sold on any public market. It is too identifiable, too famous. Really, whoever had taken Mona Lisa could only offer it in secret to a collector, probably one within the insanely deep pockets, or the thief could simply hold onto it, and join her enigmatic smile within the confines of his own home. Either way, it was assumed that the chances of ever seeing Mona again were slim to nine. So with a sad air finality, the investigation into the disappearance was officially closed. Leonardo da Vinci's striking masterpiece had been gone for nearly two and a half years, and her case deemed a failure for over a year when, in December of 1913, a strange letter arrived at the shop of Alfredo Gerri and Arts and Antiques dealer in Florence, Italy. Gerri had recently put an ad in some local newspapers to drum up business, and he was not surprised to receive an offer letter. What was surprising in this case was that the envelope bore a postmark from Paris when he didn't advertise there, and even more surprising were its contents. The note was from a person calling himself Leonardo, and it read as follows. "The stolen work of Leonardo da Vinci is in my possession. It seems to belong to Italy since its painter was an Italian. My dream is to give back this masterpiece to the land from which it came and to the country that inspired it." Alfredo Gerri was "understandably cautious and disbelieving of this note, so he sought the advice of the director of Florence's famed Uffizi Museum, a man named Giovanni Poggi, who suggested that Gerri write this so-called Leonardo and arranged for a rendezvous in order to check out the work being offered." Both men figured that Leonardo's was a dubious claim, and surely a request for an in-person meeting would be of little interest to someone peddling a worthless forgery. But Gerri was surprised when Leonardo responded quickly with reply. "Yes, yes, I'll gladly bring the painting to you." And so this is how, on Thursday, December 11, 1913, Gerri and Poggi found themselves walking wearily behind a somewhat dodgy looking man who introduced himself as Leonardo Vichanzo. Together, they meandered through the streets of Florence to a nearby hotel where Leonardo insists the painting was safely waiting for the experts. "Yeah, right. You can almost hear Gerri and Poggi thinking that. But to their credit, they played along, with the art dealer agreeing to Leonardo's request for hundreds of thousands of Italian lira should Gerri be interested in purchasing said painting. But what they saw in the hotel room was what they never actually expected to see. The real Mona Lisa, undamaged, intact, and marvelously preserved, nestled like a newborn baby in a wrap of red silk inside a secret compartment built into the bottom of an unassuming suitcase." Gerri and Poggi were dumbfounded. Of course neither of them were looove employees or Leonardo da Vinci experts, but both were fairly certain that this was the real deal. Somehow, miraculously, they convinced this Leonardo Vichanzo to let them remove the painting in order to take it to the Eiffel Tower for authentication and examination. Gerri gently but urgently carried the painting away. And once out of ears shot of Leonardo's hotel, Poggi notified the local police who nabbed the thief while he was in the midst of an afternoon nap and arrested him. How could someone who, until moments earlier, had held the world's most sought-after work of art in his hands? Be so cool and calm enough to take a snooze. Who was this guy? His actual name, it turns out, is Vichanzo Perugia, an Italian national who, wait for it, was a former looove employee whose trade was as a glacier or a workman who fits paints of glass into windows and doors. In fact, he was the one who had built the protective glass box frame for Mona Lisa, which would explain how he was able to release the painting from its hold so easily and why it was discarded gently instead of haphazardly. Perhaps Perugia felt a bit of pride in his own craftsmanship. Under investigation by Italian police, Perugia confessed the details of his crime. He noted that he entered the museum on the morning of Monday, August 21, 1911, sliding in behind other custodial employees and repairmen who performed many of their duties on Mondays while the museum was closed to the public. It really was an ideal time to undergo a great theft, considering that the number of employees on side on Mondays was greatly limited, even in terms of security staff. And of course, having worked at the looove, Perugia had the advantage of being familiar with the museum's layout and being himself being familiar and therefore unthreatening face to other looove employees. That meant that the crime was surprisingly easy for Perugia to pull off. When he discovered a moment when the salon caré was empty, Perugia lifted the Mona Lisa off the four iron pegs that secured her to the wall and took her to a nearby service staircase where he quickly removed the panel from its protective glass cover and its frame. He then wrapped his worker's smock around the painting, tucked it swiftly under his arm and left the looove through the same door by which he had entered. He confessed that he hid the painting in his Paris apartment, at a mission that would later astonish and embarrass the police, who had originally questioned Perugia at the beginning of the investigation, in his own home, no less, as they had done with all looove employees' current and former. The painting had actually been in Paris right under their noses the whole time. After two years of languishing in Perugia's Hubble, Mona was transported back to Italy when Perugia, with a high-minded mission, sought to repatriate her to her home country, mainly due to a misconception that she had originally been stolen from Italy instead of being brought to France by the artist himself. And with that, Mona Lisa returned to the limelight for the first time in years. All the Western world was ecstatic to hear the news that Mona Lisa had been found against all odds. As they did when she had been inducted, newspapers around the globe trumpeted to her return. She was a sensational headline in French-page news, and after a groundbreaking two-week solo exhibition at the U of Fitsy Gallery in Florence, Mona Lisa was returned to the looove with the greatest fanfare on January 4, 1914. And like they did when she was missing, hundreds of thousands of people stormed the looove in order to see their icon safely back on display. Mona Lisa was finally home. In retrospect, the story seems like a fairy tale. Almost Hollywood-like in its redemptive arc. A masterpiece stolen, presumed lost, then rediscovered years later unharmed. But something also feels a little bit off. Remember how calm and relaxed Perugia was enough to take a nap after Jerry imposed you removed the Mona Lisa from his possession? It's almost like it was a shock that he had gotten caught. As if he hadn't thought through the consequences very well. And how about that patriotic claim he made in his note to Jerry, where he stated that his motive was as simple as wanting to return the painting to Italy? But then why wait two more years before returning it to Italy if that was his ultimate goal? Perugia seems to have been waiting for something. Money, surely. And it was discovered that he wrote home to his family, bragging that he was about to become very rich. But what if he was waiting for something else? What if he was waiting for instructions from the real mastermind of the theft? In June of 1932, nearly 20 years after the Louvre gained its star attraction, a story appeared in the Saturday evening post of all places that reported an entirely different set of details.
This article, titled "Why and How" the Mona Lisa was stolen, was written by a reporter named Carl Decker who claimed to have met a mysterious man in 1914 who revealed the quote-unquote "true story" to him while sitting in a cafe in Casablanca. This man introduced himself as Eduardo del Valfierno, a Marquie from Argentina who proudly boasted of his long career as a very successful con man whose business was the business side of art forgery. His literal partner in crime was a French artist, art restorer, and eventual art forger, Eve Chadroulne, who, together with Valfierno, had supposedly made a killing creating fake mario paintings for unsuspecting tourists. This was all well and good, but Valfiero wanted to make things a little more interesting. Go big or go home, right? He formulated an idea to take advantage of the latest craze in the world of the ultra-rich. Newly minted millionaires and billionaires, particularly Americans, were fighting tooth and nail to outdo one another for the greatest private collections. And a side effect of this was that not only did the art market grow increasingly robust, but so did the market for very, very good forgeries. Of course, collectors either didn't know or didn't want to know if they were being offered forgeries. Why not go whole hog with this idea and pretend to offer them the very best in the whole world? So, Valfiero know allegedly hired Chadroulne to create six identical copies of the Mona Lisa, which Valfiero would then show around the world to the wealthiest of potential buyers. But in order for each collector to believe that she or he was holding the real deal, one thing had to happen. The actual Mona Lisa had to disappear from the Louvre. Of course, Valfiero know wasn't going to do the dirty work himself. One of something went wrong and he was caught. Plus, he didn't know the ins and outs of the Louvre. He needed an insider to get the job done. So, enter Peruvcia, a former Louvre employee who was not only familiar with the museum, but one who could be easily manipulated with cash and a little bit of nationalistic pride to steal Mona. While Valfiero prepped Peruvcia for his crime, Chadroulne set up his easel at the Louvre in front of the Leonardo and meticulously copied every single detail of the little painting, essentially creating a template that he could later reproduce to exact scale and on aged wooden panels. He left nothing to chance and even formulated a method of producing the surface cracking endemic to old paint and varnish called Crackelur via the use of a high-powered electric fan pointed closely to the copy's surface. Chadroulne attempted to recreate every centimeter as best as he could in order to keep any suspicious collectors off his back, including using methods and materials that would have been available during the Renaissance. But, of course, the beauty of the crime was that a collector would never have access to the real Mona Lisa in order to compare its intricate details. Each collector could then assume that he or she was offered the actual authentic painting. And since he or she could not advertise ownership, how would anyone know if there just happened to be five other similar paintings swirling around the world? After the news broke that Mona was gone, Valfiero jumped into action. According to his statements in Carl Ducker's article, he was able to quickly sell all six Mona Lisa's, netting the equivalent of nearly $90 million for himself and for Chadroulne. But there was a problem, and that problem's name was Vincienzo Perugia. Perugia was undoubtedly paid extremely well for his efforts, and the Ridiculous plan could never have succeeded without his insider knowledge and technical skill. However, he quickly breezed through his funds and he needed another infusion of cash. So he made a rash decision. For some reason, probably to keep distance from the Leonardo just in case it was discovered by the authorities. Valfiero had left the original painting in Perugia's hands, with the intention of returning to the thief with instructions on how to handle and dispose of this stolen painting when the time was right. Perugia couldn't wait any longer, and he made the natural conclusion that the sale of the Mona Lisa would net him more than the theft itself did. And so, in December 1913, he contacted Art Dealer Alfredo Geri in Florence. The best laid plans. Valfiero was dismissive of Perugia in his statements to Ducker, saying, quote, "We would have returned the painting voluntarily to the Louvre in due time had not a minor member of the cast idiotically run away with it." Indeed, the most important thing to Valfiero was being able to pawn off six fakes in the time period that the original painting was missing in action. But are we really to believe Valfiero at his word that his intention was to reinstate Mona Lisa back in the salon carre? He had become the world's most valuable painting, and he had direct access to her. A doubt that he would have wanted to give that up. Plus, he was admittedly a crook and a liar, so it's plausible that honesty wasn't his best policy and that his words to Ducker were bogus and simply said to say face. But here's the big question. If he was successfully able to sell six fakes, who's to say that he wouldn't have asked a drone to create just one more, swap it with Perugia's stolen original and deposit that copy back to the Louvre. Okay, let's get to the bottom of this. If Perugia's naturalistic claims and motivation didn't seem plausible enough, then does Valfiero know? No, not really. If anything, it's even more far-fetched and cinema-ready. I'll admit that it is far-sexier to think about criminal masterminds and secret art for dreams floating around the world in the hands of fervent billionaires. But there are also some serious issues with the Valfiero tale. First of all, there are no records anywhere verifying Valfiero's existence other than the Saturday evening post-article. Sure, it could have been a pseudonym, and Valfiero was opting to hide his true identity, but nothing remains of this supposed evil genius. And there's also the fact that the story didn't break until 1932. That's nearly 20 years after the paintings return to the Louvre. Why wait so long to tell the story? Then, let's not forget the tidbit about those six forgeries that Shadrong supposedly created. None of them have ever surfaced. Lastly, others have noted that Karl Decker wasn't the most truthful author around, and he often liked to spice up his prose with sensational stories of daring do. What's more audacious than a swashbuckling story centered around the greatest art theft of all time? As fun as it would be to believe that Decker's story is true, it really just isn't. That means that any suspicion that Shadrong and Valfiero may have stashed another fake Mona for return to the Louvre is simply ridiculous. The takeaway is that the facts point to the Mona Lisa as the Louvre as the real deal. As much as Shadrong may have attempted to copy every nook and cranny of Leonardo's masterpiece, you simply can't fake the hand of an artist completely. And then there's that crackalura that he supposedly recreated. You can try your best again to fake it, but they ultimately act like fingerprints. Every painting's crackalura is unique. And any conservator or a curator with a magnifying glass would be able to exactly match the lines across a painting with those seen in detailed photographs of the original. And upon her return, Mona Lisa was scoured and examined, not only for damage, but for verification of authenticity, which the Louvre confirmed and then announced to the world. But for me, then, another mystery still remains. It really made my art history professor so convinced that the Louvre's Mona was still a fake. A hugely intelligent, highly educated, brilliant historian, and one who was inclined to neither the rumor mill nor myth, I must admit. She was sure that this work was a skilled forgery. I remember that she leaned a little bit on the Valfiero story slash fable, but then I recall that she noted that the Mona Lisa had been stolen twice. Twice? When was the second time? Most books and articles point to the 1911 case, but very little is mentioned of any second supposed to heist. Is it possible that she was stolen again? Yes, and this time it was during World War II, when those narrowed-dewel Nazis coveted the most important painting in the world. You're not surprised in this turn of events, are you? After all, most of us are already familiar with the Monuments Men, a group of allies who were charged with protecting the great art that was feared as potential targets for looting and endangerment during the war. Art was specifically vulnerable during this period for two reasons. First, art needed to be shielded from any bombing or outright destruction from the war it's Saturday.
But there was also another plan being hatched that equally imperiled Europe's greatest pieces of art. One of Hitler's ideas was to build an incredible museum in his hometown of Lentz, Austria, with the intention of stocking it with the most important art in the entire world. The best way to do that, he figured, was to steal it, and unfortunately the Nazis were all too successful at following these orders. Historian Noah Charney estimates that about 5 million objects were stolen during World War II. Was Mona Lisa originally one of them? Well, as Charney narrates in his book, The Thaps of the Mona Lisa, on stealing the world's most famous painting, the Nazis thought that they had stolen Mona. During the war, the Nazis, under the watchful eye of fierce SS commander named August Igruber, began stashing the spoils destined for the Lentz Museum, and an abandoned salt mine in the picturesque area known as Altusay, about 80 kilometers east of Salzburg. The mandate from Igruber was that if the art could not be defended against the Allies, the mine was to be utterly destroyed, with priceless Rembrandt's, rare Vermeers, and everything else incited. But was Mona Lisa stashed there too? Charney says that there's a certain amount of confusion, because while two primary source documents include that Mona Lisa was part of the loot, others, including inventories of the mind, make no mention of it. So what actually happened? Was it looted and hidden by the Nazis at Altusay? Or not? It's almost impossible to say. And as Charney describes, the Louvre itself had historically been rather tight-lipped on the subject. He notes that the only surviving Louvre documents state that the Leonardo painting had been created up on August 27, 1939, and was listed as being sent to one of five chateaux's around France for safekeeping from the invading access troops. And then, a 1945 document attests to its safe return at the Louvre. Nothing exists to document the in-between times. But Noah Charney offers a very interesting explanation. He writes that Louvre officials revealed the existence of an identical copy of the Mona Lisa dating from the 16th century. In other words, dating from roughly the same time period of the original's creation. And let's take a note of Charney's use of the word "identical." The Louvre doesn't describe this painting as a semi-close match, but instead says that it's so authentic that it's hardly possible for a non-specialist to identify it as a copy. This reproduction was one of thousands of works of art that were gathered after the war in what became known as the Musee National de la Coupe de Assume, or the National Recovery Museum, which was home to the works of art whose original owners could not be located. The Leonardo copy was marked with an inventory number, M-N-R-265, and it languished in storage for five years unclaimed until authorities passed it along to the Louvre. Funnily enough, from 1950, where it was sent to the Louvre until the very recent past, it apparently hung on a wall outside the private office of the Louvre's museum director. By sorting through this evidence, Charney, whose own expertise is an art theft, has come to the following conclusion. Yes, a painting was indeed created in 1939, but the Louvre created up the copy, not the original, and sent it outwards into the unknown. Assuming that the Mona Lisa would be a prime target for Nazi looters, the Louvre probably kept the original hidden in Paris while allowing the copy to be taken. As Charney says, quote, "This would explain why the Mona Lisa did return to Althusset, but why it also must be that the Mona Lisa never left Paris. It was the copy that was stolen, hidden at Althusset, and later recovered." The Mona Lisa has not left her home at the Louvre in over four decades, even though she was met with clamoring crowds in the United States in 1963 and in Japan in 1974. In 2011, the museum's head of painting, Vincent Pomerade, declared that it was absolutely unthinkable that their most popular painting would ever travel again, mainly due to the fragile state of the painting. But think too of the riotous responses that tourists to the Louvre might have in Mona's absence. Certainly, the Louvre would not want to deal with such a headache if it wasn't necessary. These reasons are legitimate and totally reasonable, but if you were a conspiracy-minded person, they might also be read as a convenient spin to hide the truth from an unsuspecting public. Without the opportunity to borrow the work and see it, perhaps in another institution, art experts from all over the world do not have the ability to closely examine the work with their own eyes and scientific instruments. Tourists have noted that the Louvre specifically sources all conservators and inspectors internally and does not allow outsider access to the painting, and that many requests to scrutinize and even conserve the work have been denied flat out. And though the Mona Lisa has twice been attacked in the past, and the subject of art attacks will be analyzed in an upcoming episode of Art Curious, doesn't her current level of protection seem a little intense? A crowd deflecting cordon, two security guards, and let's not forget the ever-present security cameras. Well, no, it's probably not overkill. The work is literally invaluable, and it makes sense to protect it within an inch of its life. But it does also keep each and every person at an extreme distance. So who's to really notice whether or not the Mona Lisa on display is authentic? For the record, I choose to believe that the Mona Lisa on view is indeed the real painting created by Leonardo da Vinci in the 16th century. So much of a work of art's value lies in being seen, so it makes sense to me to have a masterpiece like this on view. But do I actually have proof that this painting is real? No, I simply accept the information provided to me by the experts. But even I must admit that if I really, really wanted to keep the world's most priceless work of art safe and secure, it sure makes a lot of sense to put a nearly identical copy on display in it instead. I would lock away the original in the vaults of the institution and keep everyone at enough of a distance that even a professional wouldn't be able to really tell the difference. And then the daily crowd of thousands of tourists would inadvertently help to make it even harder to view the painting at all. So honestly, if you were interested with the Mona Lisa, wouldn't you be tempted to do the same? Thank you for listening to this, the first episode of the Art Curious Podcast. This episode was written and narrated by me, Jennifer Dassel, with production and editing help from Josh Dassel. For images that relate to today's story, as well as links to further information, please visit our website at artcuriouspodcast.com. If you liked the show, let us know. You can email us at
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