Mona Lisa Is Recovered
The "Mona Lisa," one of the most iconic paintings in the world, was completed by Leonardo da Vinci between 1504 and 1506 and depicts the wife of a wealthy Florentine patron, Francesco del Gioconda. Renowned for her enigmatic smile, the painting has sparked numerous theories about its expression and composition. On August 21, 1911, the masterpiece was stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian painter familiar with the museum's layout. It took over two years for authorities to locate and recover the artwork, which was found in Peruggia's hotel room in Florence. Upon its return to the Louvre on December 12, 1913, the "Mona Lisa" reaffirmed its status as a cultural treasure. Despite temporary removals during World Wars I and II for security, it remains housed in the Louvre, attracting millions of visitors annually. The story of the painting's theft and recovery highlights its cultural significance and ongoing fascination within the art world.
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Mona Lisa Is Recovered
Mona Lisa Is Recovered
On December 12, 1913, the world's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa by Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci, was recovered from the residence of an Italian art thief. This priceless painting was then returned to the Louvre museum in Paris, France, where it has resided to this day, despite brief periods of removal during World War I and World War II for security reasons.
Leonardo's Mona Lisa is a portrait of Francesco del Gioconda's wife, completed between 1504 and 1506. Francesco was a wealthy patron in the city of Florence, a prosperous and powerful Italian city-state at that time. Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, portrays a young woman with a mysterious and alluring smile against a pleasant landscape. There has been much speculation about the reasons for her facial expression, ranging from Leonardo's use of light and shadow to the possibility that the model may have originally been nude and her clothes painted on at a later date. At any rate, it was Leonardo's favorite painting, and in later years it was acquired by the French royal court. Like many other art treasures it came to be placed in the Louvre, a museum built on the site of former tennis court grounds and that would become France's most esteemed repository of art works.
During the early morning hours of August 21, 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia and several other men dressed as janitors entered the Louvre and stole the Mona Lisa. Peruggia, an Italian, had worked at the Louvre before and was familiar with the layout. It took more than two years for the authorities in several nations to track him down, but the Mona Lisa was finally recovered during a raid on Peruggia's hotel room in, of all places, Florence, Italy. He was tried and convicted of robbery, serving a little more than a year in prison, and the Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre where it is now seen by millions of tourists every year.