Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman who had once worked at the Louvre, hid overnight in a storage closet and simply lifted Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece off its hooks the next morning, wrapping it in a smock and walking out the staff exit. The painting's absence went unnoticed for over 24 hours. Peruggia kept it hidden in his Paris apartment for two years before attempting to sell it to a Florence art dealer, believing he was repatriating stolen Italian treasure.
The theft was almost comically simple. The Louvre in 1911 had shockingly lax security, and Peruggia, who had worked there installing protective glass on paintings, knew the museum's routines intimately. He arrived Monday morning when the museum was closed to the public for cleaning, wearing the same white smock as the museum staff, making him invisible to anyone who saw him.
He lifted the small panel, just 30 by 21 inches, off the wall, removed it from its frame and glass case in a stairwell, and walked out with it under his coat. Guards and staff assumed the painting had simply been taken away for photography, a routine occurrence. It took until the next day for anyone to raise an alarm.
The case became a media sensation. Pablo Picasso and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire were both briefly detained as suspects. Peruggia, motivated by a mix of nationalism and profit, kept the painting in a trunk in his apartment for two years before contacting a Florentine dealer, convinced he was returning a looted Italian treasure to its homeland. He was caught, and the recovery only amplified the Mona Lisa's fame into the global icon it remains today.