Vanished Smile

by R. A. Scotti

  THE FRENCH HAD DEVOURED the baron's confession implicating Apollinaire and Picasso. Now Italians were mesmerized by Peruggia's confession. They pictured the young hero-thief far from home, falling under the spell of the timeless beauty he had rescued. As Italy applauded his feat, Peruggia warmed to his story, adding romantic embellishments:

  My work as a housepainter brought me in contact with many artists. I always felt that deep in my soul I was one of them. I spent many hours at the Louvre enjoying the masterpieces of Italy, which should never have left my country. I shall never forget the evening after I had carried the picture home. I locked myself in my room in Paris and took the picture from a drawer. I stood bewitched before la Gioconda. I fell victim to her smile and feasted my eyes on my treasure every evening, discovering each time new beauty and perversity in her. I fell in love with her.

  Peruggia stuck to his story under intense interrogation. Insisting that the idea of avenging the Corsican bandit obsessed him, he vowed with a sense of aggrieved honor, “I would be unworthy of Italy if I did not return to her one of these masterpieces.”

  The Italian public was in thrall, but the Italian constabulary was not persuaded. Police chief Tarantelli was as skeptical as the French. After questioning Peruggia repeatedly, Tarantelli was convinced that the story was fictitious. Peruggia was playing a role in a script written by an anonymous playwright. It was a brilliant performance but a performance nonetheless.

  The man did not match the crime, and even more curiously, his motive did not match the history. While it is true that the first emperor of France was a notorious art thief, Mona Lisa had been seducing the rulers of France long before Napoleon claimed an empire.

  4

  WHATEVER THE TRUTH of the tale, Mona Lisa once again became an international sensation. In Paris, extra editions of the afternoon newspapers trumpeted the find. The illustrated newspaper Excelsior put a photograph of the thief on its front page, encircled with sketches, like panels of a comic strip, showing each step of the theft.

  In England, The Illustrated London News issued a special supplement with a double-page spread of the painting. For three consecutive weeks, Mona Lisa was the lead story. Even the normally circumspect London Times became treacly:

  All is well that ends well, save for Vincenzo, who is still bewildered at finding his pains rewarded by prison and is convinced of an honorable release. What were really his motives, it would be hard to say. Mona Lisa, who might tell, only wears her enigmatic smile. After all, perhaps the story was one of simple enchantment and Vincenzo, who has shared a garret with Mona Lisa for two years, is not so much to be pitied.

  In the United States, the Los Angeles Times headlined MONA LISA IS FOUND: ITALIAN ART FANATIC CONFESSES and reported, “It is a moot question whether he is an intense patriot, a reckless thief, or insane, perhaps all three.”

  On the East Coast, The New York Times ran both a breaking-news account and an editorial on the recovery. The article began:

  The smile of la Gioconda, to which the wonder and admiration of men have been directed for a dozen generations, has suffered but a momentary eclipse. The tale of her return after hope had been all but abandoned… will be read with a curious sense of relief, not only by those to whom art is the well-spring of life, but by countless men and women who have read in her features some faint conception of the secret of the Renaissance, some enlightenment on the meaning of good and evil in humanity….

  Finding Mona Lisa was a coup for Italy, a relief for the government of France, and a stroke of luck for Alfredo Geri, who collected a reward of twenty-four thousand francs (about $100,000 today) from les Amis du Louvre and received the rosette of the Legion d'Honneur from France.∗2

  A delegation of experts, led by Paul Leprieur, curator of paintings at the Louvre, was dispatched to Florence. As luck would have it, the month before Mona Lisa was stolen, a photographic firm had taken a series of photographs of the painting, including both back and front views, for the Louvre. They were magnified and brought to Italy. Minister Ricci welcomed the second opinion, if ruefully. “I only wish that the French experts would consider it a copy,” he said, “then Mona Lisa would remain in Italy.”

  The Louvre Mona Lisa had several identifying features. One was a vertical crack in the wood panel just to the left of the part in her hair. It probably happened soon after Leonardo finished painting, as the wood expanded and contracted. At some point, to contain the crack, strips of cloth and a pair of butterfly wedges were glued to the back of the panel. When Mona Lisa was recovered in Florence, only one butterfly was in place, but the position of the wedges was clear.

  Another defining feature was the craquelure. Skeptics might argue that the Louvre labels could be faked, but Leonardo himself could not reproduce with absolute accuracy each minute fissure. Various causes—old age, the effect of varnishes, and the way the original layers of paint were applied—can result in a distinct network of fine cracks on the surface of a painting. After comparing photographs of the Louvre Mona Lisa and the recovered work inch by inch, Curator Leprieur validated the find.

  As soon as Mona Lisa's authenticity was verified, the government of Italy issued an official statement:

  The Mona Lisa will be delivered to the French ambassador with a solemnity worthy of Leonardo da Vinci and a spirit of happiness worthy of Mona Lisa's smile. Although the masterpiece is dear to all Italians as one of the best productions of the genius of their race, we will willingly return it to its foster country, which has regretted its loss so bitterly, as a pledge of friendship and brotherhood between the two great Latin nations.

  With France a member of the Triple Entente and Italy of the Triple Alliance, relations had been antagonistic. Italy's gracious response to Mona Lisa's recovery warmed the atmosphere between the nations, but it angered many ordinary Italians. There was a general feeling throughout Italy that if Mona Lisa were returning to the Louvre, France should reciprocate by sending back some of the art that Napoleon really had stolen.

  5

  THE RECOVERY or Mona Lisa by the Italians was a public mortification for the French investigators. Vincenzo Peruggia should have been a prime suspect. He had been living in Paris since 1908, and for several of those years, up until January 1911, he had been employed at the Louvre. He was one of the glaziers who had constructed Mona Lisa's controversial glass-enclosed frame. Since he had put her in the frame, he knew better than anyone how to remove her.

  Peruggia was on the list of present and past museum employees that Louvre officials provided to the police. He had been summoned for questioning in the case, and when he failed to appear, a detective went to his apartment, searched it, and interrogated him. Peruggia said that he was at work on the morning of August 21. If the police had checked his alibi, they would have found that he arrived at his job several hours late and told his boss that he had overslept, but his alibi was never corroborated, and he was never fingerprinted. Everyone from the Louvre director to the lowliest workman, it seems, had been fingerprinted—except the thief.

  Even those glaring oversights should not have mattered, because Peruggia had a rap sheet. He had been arrested twice in France, which meant that the French police had his criminal profile in their system. On June 23, 1908, Peruggia had been charged with attempted robbery and spent the night in jail in Macon, near Lyons. In Paris a few months later, he was involved in a fight over a prostitute. Because he was carrying a knife, he was arrested for weapons possession, sentenced to eight days, and fined sixteen francs.

  Alphonse Bertillon had a full criminal profile of Vincenzo Peruggia in his files, two sets of mug shots, two sets of fingerprints, and the thumbprint lifted from Mona Lisa's frame, yet Peruggia's profile never turned up. Although Bertillon had reputedly the most sophisticated organization in Europe, with seven hundred fifty thousand criminal records cataloged and cross-referenced, they were classified only by right prints. The impression on Mona Lisa's frame was a left thumbprint and could not be matched.


  The French police had Mona Lisa in their sights from the beginning, but no one realized it. Their fixation on a ring of art thieves had narrowed their perspective. After Peruggia's arrest, a new team of investigators scrambled to gather the evidence that Lépine and Bertillon had missed. The renewed hunt started with Peruggia's apartment.

  Photographs show a dingy room with an unmade brass bed and an old gas stove. Soiled floral wallpaper covers the walls of the closet where Mona Lisa was stashed. The closet is empty except for a pile of trash and an old umbrella. The police came away with a sheaf of ninety-three love letters and a daybook suggesting the thief's motives might not have been as pure as he pretended. Currency, not Napoleon, had been on Peruggia's mind from the outset. A journal entry dated December 10, 1910, eight months before the heist, listed the names of art collectors and dealers in the United States, Italy, and Germany, including John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Andréw Carnegie, and Alfredo Geri.

  The love letters Peruggia had saved were written in fractured French, probably by a foreigner, the police thought, and signed Mathilde. Immediately, word of a mythic romance spread. As the story was recounted, Peruggia had fallen desperately in love with the beautiful Mathilde, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Mona Lisa. Mathilde was killed, and unable to have the flesh-and-blood woman, the heartbroken young lover took her image instead.

  In a somewhat more circumspect account, The New York Times reported that Peruggia had met Mathilde in a Paris dance hall. She had come with another Italian and was injured in a fight. Rushing to her rescue, Peruggia carried her to a cab and brought her to the home of an old Italian woman who nursed her back to health. During her convalescence, friendship turned to ardent love.

  While continuing to hunt for the mysterious Mathilde, police also searched the apartments of Peruggia's neighbors and friends. Although initially he insisted that he had acted alone, under questioning, Peruggia implicated two brothers, Vincente and Michele Lancelotti. It was one of the few inconsistencies in his account. The Lancelottis were “macaroni,” too, and according to Peruggia, they hid the picture and helped him construct the false-bottomed box.

  Within the week, the brothers and a certain Mathilde Clamagirand were under arrest. All three denied any knowledge of Mona Lisa or her kidnapping. Mathilde did not recall ever seeing Mona Lisa or even hearing Peruggia murmur her name, although she did remember the white case in his room.

  In Florence, Peruggia continued to glory in his fame. He scoffed at the Paris investigators and mocked their scenario of the theft. Instead of slinking out the side entrance at the Porte Visconti, as the French investigators surmised, Peruggia boasted that he had carried Mona Lisa in his arms down the front stairs of the Louvre. With a salute to the Winged Victory, he marched out the front gate. No one questioned him or tried to impede him in any way. On that bright August morning, the thief and his captive strolled home, where he deposited her in his apartment, then went to work.

  Peruggia's boast conflicted with the testimony of the Louvre plumber Sauve and with the evidence. The brass doorknob, missing from a side entry, had been recovered in the museum garden near the Porte Visconti. But after so many slights and resentments, belittled as a “macaroni,” he was evening the score. “The abstraction of the picture was a very simple matter. I had only to choose an opportune moment and a mere twist would put the picture in my hands. The idea took possession of me, and I decided to take the step.” Peruggia expressed great happiness that he had finally restored da Vinci's masterpiece to Florence, where it belonged. “I am an Italian and I do not want the picture given back to the Louvre,” he said. “It must hang in the Uffizi Gallery.” Peruggia's wish was answered, if only briefly.

  6

  ONCE THE LOUVRE TEAM confirmed that the recovered art was the real da Vinci, a grateful France, at the request of Minister Ricci, allowed Mona Lisa to stay in her homeland for two weeks. Protected by an international honor guard of gendarmes and carabinieri in full dress uniform, she made her debut in the Uffizi Gallery on December 14. Mona Lisa was decked out in a carved and gilded sixteenth-century walnut frame and carried through the corridors with the solemnity of a canonization. Government officials, artists, journalists, and dignitaries gathered for the triumphant procession. It was an emotional moment. Soldiers saluted, men doffed their hats, and women made the sign of the cross as she passed.

  Mona Lisa was brought into the portrait gallery, where Florentines who had known Leonardo and Lisa del Giocondo looked down from their frames. There, on a stage draped in velvet and protected by a railing, she was placed on an easel between Leonardo's Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi.

  Carolyn Leech described the scene in her diary:

  The picture in profound silence moved down the long corridor. The silence was reverent as if the audience were in veneration. … High officials of the army there were, and men of lowest rank, artists of all degrees and artisans, the titled world and scholars, the working world and peasants.… Not even the hanging of the Baptistery's first bronze door could have stirred the emotions much more deeply than did this procession, at once so medieval and so modern….

  Suddenly, as in a flash, one understood that the lovely Tuscan scene, the background for the mysterious lady, was a prophecy fulfilled—had she not traveled the distance across the mountains and followed the road by the river until she reached home? Much is written of “the darkened condition” of the canvas…. Perhaps the dimness of the two-year hiding place had rested the centuries-old colors, young when America was young. If there remains not the first glory, in its place shines a transfiguring new light.

  The Italians were crazed with joy. An ecstatic throng estimated at more than thirty thousand had gathered outside the Uffizi. Groups of one hundred, women first, were allowed to enter. Director Poggi manned the door of the gallery, urging calm, but the crowd swept past the guards and mobbed the museum to glimpse their Gioconda. The stampede threatened to topple busts and statues. Police were knocked aside and windows broken in the wild rush to reach her.

  After five days at the Uffizi, with the fifth and final day reserved for schoolchildren and their teachers, Mona Lisa went on the road. She became history's first traveling mega art show. Minister Ricci, who had remained in Florence with her, organized the trip and personally supervised her packing in a custom-fitted padded rosewood box with a lock and key.

  On the morning of December 20, protected by a police guard, Ricci, Director Poggi, and several parlor cars of officials escorted Mona Lisa by train to Rome. Carabinieri were on alert at every station along the route, just as they were when the royal family traveled. In Rome, King Victor Emmanuel enjoyed a private viewing. On December 21, 1913, at another solemn ceremony befitting a coronation or an abdication, Mona Lisa was officially returned to France. She was placed in the hands of the French ambassador Camille Barrere, who brought her to Palazzo Farnese, which had become the French embassy. While she was in residence there, the queen of Italy, the queen mother, and the entire diplomatic corps came to call.

  Mona Lisa spent Christmas in Rome. For five days, from Tuesday through Saturday, she was on exhibit at the Borghese Gallery. Security was stringent. There was fear that Peruggia had not been a lone thief and that his accomplices would stop at nothing to get Mona Lisa back. A police phalange surrounded her at all times, and Minister Ricci was at her side during museum hours. Plainclothes detectives mingled with the crowds. On the final day, the throng was so large that women fainted and extra police were called out. Even after the gallery closed for the night, Romans kept a vigil at the gate.

  From Rome, Mona Lisa traveled to Milan. Again, the crowds were enormous and enormously enthusiastic. For two days, she held court at the Brera Gallery, and no one remembered, or cared to remember, that the Brera had been founded by Napoleon. A commemorative medal struck to mark the occasion bore the head of Leonardo da Vinci and the inscription “May her divine smile ever shine.” On her final night in Italy, the gallery stayed open until midn
ight to accommodate a crowd of sixty thousand.

  There were no arrivedercis—see you again—only addio. This was la Gioconda's last goodbye to her homeland. She had traveled in state from Florence to Rome, and from Rome to Milan, and wherever she went, adoring throngs greeted her. After her triumphant two-week tour, she was carefully packed for her return to France. Again escorted by a delegation of politicians, museum officials, and police guards, she was given a private train car on the Milan-Paris express. Mona Lisa, who had spent two ignominious years closeted in a grungy Paris apartment and then had traveled in third class across Europe, was going home in grand style. The masterpiece that Napoleon did not steal was on its way back to rejoin the imperial booty.

  7

  AT THREE O'CLOCK on New Year's Eve morning, the Milan-Paris express crossed the border and entered France. It reached the Gare de Lyon at two-thirty that afternoon.

  Paris was dressed for the holidays. The mood was festive, and there was frost in the air. Mona Lisa was everywhere, smiling from cards and posters. In Paris that Christmas, there were more pictures of Mona Lisa than the Holy Family. The Louvre issued a formal card, announcing that she would be receiving visitors again every day except Monday. Another popular, if ruder, postcard pictured her with a baby in her arms and Peruggia's face in the upper-left corner. The caption read Son Retour—Her Return.

  The lakes and ponds in the Bois de Boulogne and the lagoon at Versailles were frozen solid. So, too, were the expressions of the chic Parisians. In Paris society, the “Mona Lisa look” was all the fad. There was a run on yellow powder, which, dusted generously on the face, neck, and bust, suggested her golden complexion. Society ladies practiced her smile, which immobilized their facial muscles and consequently minimized conversation.