Vincenzo Peruggia
Born October 8, 1881, in Dumenza in the north of Italy. The oldest of five children, he began working at twelve as a house painter in Milan. In 1908 Vincenzo moved to Paris where he became very sick and hospitalized for lead poisoning, a nugget that will come into play later. Moving away from the painting business he got a job with the A Gobier company that had worked on the glass and windows of the Musée du Louvre since 1832.
Unhinged people kept entering into the Louvre and tossing paint and slashing paintings so the Louvre decided the most important pieces needed to be protected with new frames and glass. Vincenzo’s time with the Gobier company wasn’t ideal. His French coworkers picked on him and called him Macaroni. Needless to say, he did become the best and when the Louvre needed the frames of the Italian masters replaced, Vincenzo was the only man for the job.
Each day for a year Peruggia was up close and personal with each of the Italian paintings that had once belonged to the kings of France. After the Raphael’s were completed, Vincenzo tackled Leonardo da Vinci’s and of course the Mona Lisa. This gave him an in-depth knowledge of the future star of the Louvre although he hadn’t decided to steal her quite yet.
One theory that has been floated around is that he chose the Mona Lisa because she resembles one of his girlfriends. When his tiny apartment was inspected after his arrest they found over 90 letters from a woman named “Mathilde”. The mystery woman is also tied to one of his few brushes with the law prior to the grand theft.
Vincenzo saw Mathilde one night in a Parisian dance hall and saw another man talking with her. She brushed him off but the man stabbed her. Vincenzo zoomed in to take her to the home of an Italian woman in his neighborhood who cared for the young girl.
He wasn’t a stranger to the police and was in the system including his fingerprints. However, in those days everything was on paper, and stacks of thousands of criminals would have to be searched through to find the one matching thumbprint.
On June 23, 1908, he was arrested for an attempted robbery and a few months later again for a fight over a prostitute and was sentenced to eight days in jail.
The working theory was that Vincenzo believed Napoleon had stolen her from Italy. For decades his daughter and family believed he had taken her as an act of patriotism. However, that was dispelled when letters were found where he repeatedly said he had a large payday happening soon.
Following his arrest he was held in the Italian prison and worshiped like a king. Strangers offered to pay for his lawyer, women sent him love letters and brought flowers each day and the Italian papers claimed he was a hero.
The day after her triumphant return to the Louvre, Vincenzo was in front of an Italian judge. He claimed that all the Italian paintings in the Louvre had been stolen by Napoleon. They didn’t have plaques for each painting with the provenance back in 1911. He also blamed his lead poisoning for his actions.
Already held in jail for seven months, his trial was delayed until June 4, 1914, and many of the former French officials involved in the case had retired or died. Lawyers Renzo Carline and Fernando Targetti argued that keeping the trial in Italy, not France worked in his favor. When his case was settled he was sentenced to 1 year and 15 days. On July 28 World War I was declared, the next day Peruggia’s case was reduced to 7 months and 9 days. He had been in jail since December 14, 1913, authorities declared he had served enough time, and was released the same day.
The perfect crime of one of the greatest pieces of art resulted in nothing more than a hand slap. Viewed as a hero everywhere he went he returned to his small village of Dumenza and then joined the army fighting for the country he loved.
In 1921 with his new wife, he returned to France and opened a paint shop. One day he decided to take her to Paris and visit the Louvre. On a Sunday morning in 1923, Vincenzo who was now known as Pietro Peruggia walked into the Grand Galerie and introduced his wife to the Mona Lisa.
On his birthday, October 8, 1925, while holding a bottle of champagne he fell to his feet and died instantly of a massive heart attack. His daughter Celestina was just 19 months old, too young to remember her father but claimed until her death in 2011 that her father had stolen the Mona Lisa in an act of patriotism.
Peruggia was buried in the Condé cemetery in the small town of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés at the eastern edge of Paris. When the family stopped paying for his plot his body was exhumed and placed in a communal grave. There is no grave or marker for the notorious thief but you can go to the Louvre and visit the Mona Lisa, his greatest claim to fame.
Lisa del Giocondo
Lisa di Antonio Gherardini was born in Florence on June 15, 1479, to a noble landowning Tuscan family. Not far from The Palazzo Pitti where the Medici family lived was the home of Antonmaria Gherardini and Lucrezia del Caccia. The family lived on the corner of the via Maggio and via Squazza when Lisa was born and then moved to the other side of the river in 1494. Near Santa Croce between via del Pepi and via Ghibellina they discovered their new neighbors, the Giocondo’s.
On March 5, 1495, at 15 years old, Lisa married the son of her neighbor, Francesco del Giocondo. Francesco was from a rich family that made their money in the silk business. A widow, a father, and nineteen years older than Lisa who also had a somewhat famous family as a neighbor. Living just a few doors down from Ser Piero da Vinci, the father of Leonardo.
A year later they welcomed their first child, Piero, quickly followed by Piera in 1497, Camilla in 1499, Marietta in 1500, Andrea in 1502, and finally Giocondo in 1507. Sadly only two survived past adolescence.
Francesco became a civil servant and was elected to one esteemed post after another from 1499 to 1512. Once thought to be working for the exiled Medici family he was tossed into prison until the Medici’s returned and bailed him out.
In 1502, Francesco commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint a portrait of his wife. Leonardo was at the height of his fame at the moment after just completing the Last Supper but was also in need of money so accepted the job. Having just given birth to her son Andrea she sat for the portrait, considered quite large at the time for its subject matter.
Leonardo began painting her in February 1503 and for days on end the lovely Lisa sat in front of him while a band played music to keep her spirits up during the long sittings. Four or five years later Leonaro put it aside until she would leave for France.
Lisa never saw the unfinished painting. Contracting the plague in 1539 Francesco died and Lisa left Florence to live with her daughter in the Sant’Orsola convent where she died July 15, 1542.
Leonardo liked to “meditate” on his paintings, work a little on a painting then take a break to ponder what he would do next. So it wasn’t out of the norm that the painting of Lisa wasn’t finished. In 1508 he carried the painting with him to Milan, then to Rome in 1513 until she moved with the artist to France.