The Crimes of Paris

by Dorothy Hoobler; Thomas Hoobler

  8

  THE THIEF

  Ayear after the Mona Lisa vanished, the officials of the Louvre were forced to confront the unthinkable: that she would never return. The blank space on the wall of the Salon Carré had been filled with a colored reproduction of the painting. But that had begun to fade and curl, and people now averted their eyes as they passed it, as if to avoid the reminder of a tragic death.

  So one day when the doors to the museum opened, patrons discovered another painting hanging there: also a portrait, but this one of a man, Baldassarre Castiglione, by Raphael. Though Raphael, a few years younger than Leonardo, had learned from studying the older man’s work, this portrait is markedly different in spirit from La Joconde. The sitter is somber, even tired; he looks as if he has not smiled in a long time. Raphael’s masterpiece may have reflected the feeling of the curators that even though the space on the wall was now filled, there would be a hole in the museum’s soul forever.

  i

  But was the Mona Lisa truly gone for good? Occasionally, stories appeared about sightings of the famous painting. James Duveen, the nephew of Henry J. Duveen, one of London’s leading art dealers, later related that his uncle actually had a chance to buy the Mona Lisa. The elder Duveen was convinced that the offer was genuine, a hunch that later proved correct.

  One morning, Henry J. Duveen was in the Bond Street showrooms… when he heard a man arguing with an assistant.

  “I won’t go away,” the fellow was saying. “I’ve come to see the head of the firm, and see him I will.”

  The man was creating something of a scene, so my uncle went over.

  “What is the trouble?” he asked.

  “I must see you alone and at once. It is a very important matter.”

  Henry J. Duveen, not liking the look of the man, did not take him to his private office but to the far side of the large entrance gallery.

  “Well?”

  “Will you give me your word of honor that you will never reveal what I am going to tell you?”

  My uncle began to think the seedy-looking foreigner was mad and tried to humor him.

  “Of course; of course,” he murmured.

  “If you don’t,” snarled the Italian, “I and my friends will know how to deal with you. You’d better be careful! Now listen; I have the Gioconda here in London. Will you buy it?”

  My uncle stared at him open-mouthed. It was too incredible a thing to grasp all at once. That this anarchistic-looking fellow should —

  “Well, what do you say? What’s the figure you’ll give me?”

  Henry J. Duveen suddenly realized that the man was not mad. His brain worked like lightning. He took the only way out: he burst out laughing as though he thought the whole thing was a hoax, and walked away. As my uncle said to me afterwards: “I believed the fellow all right; he had nothing to gain by lying; but I would sooner have gone around with a stick of dynamite in my pocket for the rest of my life than have had any knowledge of that affair!” 1

  ii

  Another dealer proved not to be so cautious. Alfredo Geri, owner of the Galleria Borgognissanti in Florence, Italy, was an active dealer in art and antiques. He often placed advertisements in newspapers in several European cities, including Paris, offering to buy old works of art. But he could hardly have imagined what he would be offered in a letter he received in November 1913. The sender, who signed himself “Leonard,” claimed to have the Mona Lisa in his possession.

  At first, Geri thought his correspondent was a crackpot or a hoaxer. But Leonard said he was an Italian who had been “suddenly seized with the desire to return to his country at least one of the many treasures which, especially in the Napoleonic era, had been stolen from Italy.” 2 He also mentioned that although he was not setting a specific price, he himself was not a wealthy man and would not refuse compensation if his native country were to reward him.

  That struck a note in Geri’s heart. He glanced at the return address on the envelope: a post office box in Paris. Probably, Geri thought, the painting had long ago been spirited out of Paris, but just suppose… Though Geri was a businessman, he was also a collector, and collectors always live with the hope of finding a treasure among the trash.

  Geri took the letter to the most knowledgeable art expert in Florence: Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery. (Within the Uffizi’s collection was a genuine Leonardo: The Adoration of the Magi.) Poggi thought following up on the offer was worth a try, but suggested Geri should demand that Leonard bring the painting to Florence, where Poggi could inspect it. Poggi had a document from the Louvre that detailed certain marks that were on the back of the original panel; no forger could be aware of these.

  Geri did as Poggi suggested, but Leonard proved to be an elusive figure. More than once, he set a date for his arrival in Florence, and then sent a letter canceling the meeting. Geri assumed that he was a hoaxer after all, until on December 9 he received a telegram saying that Leonard was in Milan and would be in Florence on the following day.

  That was inconvenient, for Poggi had gone on a trip to Bologna. Geri sent him an urgent telegram, using oblique language in case someone else should read it: “OUR PARTY COMING FROM MILAN WILL BE HERE WITH OBJECT TOMORROW. NEED YOU HERE. PLEASE RESPOND. GERI.”3 Poggi wired back that he could not arrive by the following day, but would be in Florence the day after that, a Thursday.

  Geri prepared to stall. He was well aware that many people had claimed to have, or to know who had, the Mona Lisa, and that all these claims had been dead ends. But somehow he had a hunch that Leonard was different. Accordingly, when a thin young man wearing a suit and tie and sporting a handsome mustache arrived at the dealer’s gallery the next day, Geri showed him into his office and pulled down the blinds, emphasizing the secret nature of the conversation.

  Eagerly — perhaps too much so — Geri asked where the painting was. Leonard replied that it was in the hotel where he was staying. Perhaps because he could not believe that someone would leave such a valuable object in a hotel room, Geri showed him a photographic reproduction of the Mona Lisa and asked if this was the painting.

  Leonard nodded, with a quizzical look. Didn’t everyone know what the Mona Lisa looked like?

  Geri pressed him further. The original, he asked. You have the original?

  According to Geri’s account, Leonard replied, “I repeat: we are dealing with the real Gioconda. I have good reason to be sure.” 4 Leonard coolly declared that he was certain because he had taken the painting from the Louvre himself. He then gave an abbreviated account of the theft. Interestingly, some of his details were different from those known by the French police to be true. He said, for example, that he had entered the museum on Monday morning with other workers. If that were true, he would have been stopped, for everyone going in was checked against a list; moreover the police had found evidence that someone had stayed overnight in a storage closet from Sunday to the morning of the theft.

  Geri was not aware of these discrepancies, but he was curious about one thing. Had Leonard been alone when he stole the painting? he asked. Leonard “was not too clear on that point. He seemed to say yes, but didn’t quite do so [but his answer was] more ‘yes’ than ‘no.’” 5

  Eventually the discussion got down to the reward — though here the two men differed in their later accounts. Leonard claimed, “When I came to Florence and was in Geri’s presence, these were my exact words: ‘I want nothing; I set no price on the restitution I am making to Italy.…’ Then Geri said to me, ‘We’ll do things in such a way as to make us all content.’” 6

  Geri, on the other hand, said that when he asked Leonard what kind of reward he had in mind, the thief boldly answered 500,000 lire. That was the equivalent of $100,000 and quite a fortune in those days, though of course the painting itself was valued far higher. Geri, holding his breath, thought that he had better agree, so he said, “That’s fine. That’s not too high.” 7 The important thing was to recover the painting, and he would promise Le
onard the sun and the moon if he had to.

  Naturally, Geri was eager to see the painting, but he feared he would not be able to determine whether it was genuine without Poggi’s help, so he asked Leonard to return the following day at three o’clock. Geri showed the man out, tempted to follow him, not knowing if he would ever see him again.

  The next afternoon, with Poggi present, Geri grew anxious when Leonard did not show up at the appointed time. Had he been frightened off by something? The minutes went by and finally the doorbell rang. There stood Leonard, a quarter of an hour late on an errand that could bring him half a million lire!

  Geri introduced Poggi, and to his relief, the two men “shook hands enthusiastically, Leonard saying how glad he was to be able to shake the hand of the man to whom was entrusted the artistic patrimony of Florence.” 8 As the three of them left the gallery, “Poggi and I were nervous,” Geri recalled. “Leonard, by contrast, seemed indifferent.” 9

  Leonard took them to the Hotel Tripoli-Italia on the Via de’ Panzani, only a few blocks from the Duomo, the magnificent basilica whose dome had towered over the city even before Leonardo da Vinci lived there. Leonard’s small room was on the third floor. Inside, he took from under the bed a small trunk made of white wood. When he opened the lid, Geri was dismayed: it was filled with “wretched objects: broken shoes, a mangled hat, a pair of pliers, plastering tools, a smock, some paint brushes, and even a mandolin.” 10 Calmly, Leonard removed the items one by one and tossed them onto the floor. Surely, Geri thought, this was not where the Mona Lisa had been hidden for the past twenty-seven months. He peered inside but saw nothing more.

  Then Leonard lifted what had seemed to be the bottom of the trunk. Underneath was an object wrapped in red silk. Geri held his breath as Leonard took it to the bed and removed the covering. “To our astonished eyes,” Geri recalled, “the divine Gioconda appeared, intact and marvelously preserved. We took it to the window to compare it with a photograph we had brought with us. Poggi examined it and there was no doubt that the painting was authentic. The Louvre’s catalogue number and stamp on the back of it matched with the photograph.” 11

  Geri’s heart was pounding, but he forced himself to remain calm, for the most difficult part of the transaction had to be accomplished. He and Poggi explained that the painting had to be taken to the Uffizi Gallery for further tests. Leonard seemed pleased, for he knew that the Uffizi was almost as prestigious an institution as the Louvre itself. Clearly, he expected to go along with them.

  The Mona Lisa was rewrapped in the red silk, and the three men went downstairs. As they were passing through the lobby, however, the concierge stopped them. Suspiciously, he pointed to the package and asked what it was. He obviously thought it was the hotel’s property, but Geri and Poggi, showing their credentials, vouched for Leonard, and the concierge let them pass. Geri remarked later that it had been easier to steal the painting from the Louvre than to remove it from the hotel. “If the guardians of the Louvre had had the same curiosity, never would the Gioconda have come to Florence.” 12

  At the Uffizi, Poggi compared sections of the painting with close-up photographs that had been taken at the Louvre. There was a small vertical crack in the upper left-hand part of the panel, matching the one in the photos. Most telling of all was the pattern of craquelure, cracks in the paint that had appeared as the surface dried and aged. A forger could make craquelure appear on a freshly painted object, but no one could duplicate the exact pattern of the original.

  There could be no further doubt: the Mona Lisa had been recovered.

  Poggi and Geri explained to Leonard that it would be best to leave the painting at the Uffizi. They would have to get further instructions from the government; of course they themselves could not authorize the payment he deserved.

  The Uffizi was an awesome setting, and Leonard felt overwhelmed by their arguments. How could he doubt two men of such standing and integrity? He did mention that he was finding it a bit expensive to stay in Florence. Yes, they understood, said the two experts. He would be well rewarded, and soon. They shook his hand warmly and congratulated him on his patriotism.

  As soon as he left, Geri and Poggi notified the authorities. Not long after Leonard returned to his hotel room, he answered a knock at the door and found two policemen there to arrest him. He was, they said, quite astonished.

  iii

  As word spread that the Mona Lisa had been found, the first reaction was disbelief. Upon hearing the news, Corrado Ricci, the director of Italy’s Department of Fine Arts in Rome, immediately left for Florence so that he could conduct his own tests on the painting. Other art experts converged on the Uffizi, eager to see the work. Of course, just to be present at the examination was a mark of one’s importance, so Poggi had more requests than he could handle.

  When a reporter telephoned a curator of the Louvre to tell him the news, the Frenchman was at dinner and flatly refused to believe it. He said it was impossible and hung up. The museum itself issued a cautious statement: “The curators of the Louvre… wish to say nothing until they have seen the painting. Certain descriptions of details and features give rise to some doubts among them.” 13

  Ricci, however, confirmed Poggi’s previous judgment that the painting was authentic, and the Italian government made an official announcement to that effect. The French ambassador in Rome made personal calls on the premier and foreign minister of Italy to offer his government’s gratitude. It was at the time presumed, but not of course absolutely certain, that the painting would be returned to the Louvre.

  When the news reached the Italian Parliament, it interrupted a fistfight on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies. The minister of public education brandished a telegram about the return of the Mona Lisa, and the battling deputies surrounded him, clamoring for details. When he reported that the thief had taken the painting under the impression that he was recovering one of the treasures stolen from Italy by Napoleon, some of the deputies nodded. Even those who knew Leonardo himself had taken the painting to France believed that the French armies had seized other works of art during the Napoleonic Wars, for which no reparations had been paid. It seemed only fair that Italy should now keep the painting done by one of its most illustrious sons.

  Cooler heads prevailed, and the minister announced later, “The ‘Mona Lisa’ will be delivered to the French Ambassador with a solemnity worthy of Leonardo da Vinci and a spirit of happiness worthy of Mona Lisa’s smile. Although the masterpiece is dear to all Italians as one of the best productions of the genius of their race, we will willingly return it to its foster country… as a pledge of friendship and brotherhood between the two great Latin nations.” 14 The thought that the two countries were united in their common heritage was significant, for Italy was formally an ally of (non-Latin-speaking) Germany, France’s perennial enemy. In 1915, after the outbreak of World War I, Italy joined the fighting on the side of France, in part owing to the fraternal feelings engendered by the Mona Lisa affair.

  iv

  Meanwhile, the man who called himself Leonard was being intensively questioned by the police. He talked freely, for he was still under the impression that he would be acclaimed by Italians when they found out his motive for the theft. He admitted that his real name was Vincenzo Perugia 15 and that he had been born in 1881 in the village of Dumenza, near Lake Como. Having left there as a young man because there were not enough jobs available, he went to France, where he found work as a housepainter and carpenter. (“Pittore,” he responded when asked for his occupation — using the word for artist, not merely housepainter.) Yes, he had worked at the Louvre — had, in fact, been one of those who had made the protective box that held the glass covering the painting. Perugia confessed that he had become fascinated by the image: “Many times while working at the Louvre I stopped before daVinci’s picture and was humiliated to see it there on foreign soil. I wasn’t attached to the Louvre for long, but I remained on friendly terms with my old working companions and I continued
to visit the museum, where I was well known. I thought it would be a great thing for Italy were I to present the wonderful masterpiece to her, so I planned the theft.” 16

  This news turned the spotlight back to the Sûreté and brought uncomfortable questions for Lépine and Bertillon. It turned out that Bertillon’s massive files did contain a record card for Perugia, with fingerprints. He had been arrested twice before: once for attempted robbery, and a second time for carrying a knife. But Bertillon’s insistence that his own system was superior to fingerprinting had proved to be a crucial error. He could not match the thumbprint on the Mona Lisa’s frame to the one on Perugia’s arrest record because the files were not arranged according to fingerprint patterns but by the system of physical measurements called bertillonage. And since the police had no suspect to measure, they could not determine Perugia’s identity.

  Some reporters recalled that at the time of the theft, all current and recent employees of the Louvre had been called in for questioning. Was that the case with Perugia? The records were checked, producing more embarrassing revelations: Perugia had indeed worked at the Louvre between October 1910 and January 1911, although no one could say for sure if he had really worked on the glass covering for the Mona Lisa. Worse yet, when he had not responded to a letter asking him to come in for questioning, a detective named Brunet had gone to Perugia’s room and interrogated him. Brunet had even searched the place, finding nothing. If Perugia was telling the truth, the Mona Lisa was actually there, in the false-bottomed trunk, during the detective’s visit. Brunet had dutifully noted in his report that Perugia had been at work elsewhere on the day the painting was stolen. However, when reporters tracked down Perugia’s employer, they learned that his records showed Perugia had been two hours late for work that morning. Perugia confirmed this, saying that after he stole the painting, he took it to his room before reporting for work.