Picasso and the Theft of the Mona Lisa

Read an excerpt here from R.A. Scotti's new book, Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa. In August 1911 the Mona Lisa vanished from the Louvre. The early stages of the investigation were more conceptual than forensic, and suspicion initially fell upon Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, leaders of la bande de Picasso, which wasn't a criminal cabal but rather a group of avant-garde artists. Picasso was hundreds of miles away from Paris when the Mona Lisa was stolen. Nevertheless, soon after returning to Paris he was arrested in his Montmartre studio and hauled away to the Palais de Justice on a bus.

Picasso had nothing to do with the theft of the Leonardo painting, but his conscience wasn't entirely clear. He possessed a pair of Bronze Age Iberian statues stolen from the Louvre by a Belgian masquerading as a French baron. (In those days, stealing art from the Louvre was like shoplifting from Walgreen's.) The arresting officers never noticed the stolen artworks in Picasso's studio, but Apollinaire, who had been arrested a few days earlier, had ratted out Picasso for possessing stolen merchandise. Picasso was terrorized by a judge's questions in open court about the stolen statues, but the artist had the presence of mind to deny any knowledge of their theft. Picasso was released under his own recognizance and promptly incorporated the stolen Louvre statues into Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

For his crime Picasso spent a month in a constant state of paranoia as he feared being arrested again. Apollinaire spent two miserable days in prison. For years afterward he grumbled about being the only person in France arrested for the theft of the Mona Lisa. Two years after it vanished from the Louvre, the stolen painting turned up in a Florence apartment only blocks away from where Lisa Gherardini, the subject of the painting, was conceived.

Comments

[Andrew]

Fascinating. This is the first time I heard about this. It did remind me of F for Fake, but that's a different type of "art crime."

[Richard Prouty]

I'd read once or twice that the statues in Les Demoiselles had been stolen, but I didn't realize their theft was connected to the Mona Lisa theft.

[W. Buck]

R. A. Scotti's wonderful book's published title is "Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft fo Mona Lisa." It makes a delicious read.

[Richard Prouty]

Thanks for the update, W. Buck. I've changed the title of the Scotti book.

[Pat Harris]

The belgian thief was a friend of Picasso's. Just WHO gave this thief the idea to steal those particular sculptures? Hmmmmm. And the statues (with 'property of the Louvre') painted on their base end up in Picasso's apartment for a couple of years. How stupid is everyone? It is obvious that Picasso commissioned this theft.

[Richard Prouty]

The theft of the Iberian statues was pretty suspicious. As I recall the particulars of the case, there's no proof Picasso commissioned the theft, but it's hard to imagine that the theft wasn't committed with him in mind--if he didn't commission it outright.