the Mona Lisa Heist: Picasso, Panic, and Theft That Humiliated Paris

In 1911, the Mona Lisa vanished from the Louvre-and the Paris police nearly turned Pablo Picasso into the villain of the century.The real thief was Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian workman who knew the museum's routines well enough to carry Leonardo's masterpiece away with astonishing ease. But while the stolen panel sat hidden for more than two years, France chased conspiracies, questioned bohemian artists, jailed poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and dragged a terrified twenty-nine-year-old Picasso before a magistrate.The Mona Lisa Heist reconstructs the true story behind the scandal: the Louvre's humiliating security failures, the stolen Iberian sculptures that made Picasso look guilty, the press frenzy that turned rumor into spectacle, and the bizarre chain of events that helped transform Leonardo's famous sitter into a global celebrity.Witty, fast-moving, and grounded in the historical record, this is for readers who love true crime, art history, famous figures behaving badly, and historical incidents stranger than fiction.