On the morning of 21 August 1911, a handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia walked out of the Louvre carrying the Mona Lisa under his white coat. He kept her in a trunk in his Paris room for two years.
Peruggia believed Italy had been robbed. He wanted to return Leonardo’s masterpiece to his homeland. Instead he hid it behind a false bottom while police searched half of Europe. The theft made front pages worldwide. Empty hooks and a bare wall became the most famous image in art.
He was caught in December 1913 trying to sell it to a Florence dealer. Italy displayed the painting in triumph for two weeks, then quietly sent it back to France under the terms of a 1815 treaty. Peruggia served six months, became a national hero in Italy, and died forgotten in 1925.
The glass case and alarm system installed after his arrest are still there. Every few years someone jokes about stealing her again. Nobody ever does. The memory of those two empty years is protection enough.