Vanished Smile (21 page)

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

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.

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.

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 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 midnight 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.

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.

Although anticipation was keen, Mona Lisa did not go directly to the Louvre. Like a prisoner of war who has been repatriated or rescued, she was “debriefed.” At the École des Beaux-Arts, she was examined, X-rayed, photographed, and subjected to a minute analysis of her
craquelure
. In her column for
Le Matin
, Colette deplored the experience: “They pick at her, uncover her, discover her.”

Finally, on January 4, 1914, Paris officially welcomed Mona Lisa home. A gala procession transported her through the streets. Refitted in her old carved frame, she returned to the Louvre at last, but not to her familiar spot in the Salon Carré. In her first two days back, one hundred thousand visitors streamed in to see her, twenty times the usual number. Because the crowds were so huge, she was temporarily given a gallery of her own.