Departures of note

Vincenzo Peruggia, a decorator who had briefly worked at the Louvre as a glazier, stole the Mona Lisa on 21 August 1911. He entered the museum wearing a worker's smock, lifted the painting off its wall pegs, removed its protective case and frame in a service stairway, and left through a service door unlocked by a plumber who mistook him for an employee. The theft was not discovered until the next day, and the ensuing investigation initially focused on other suspects, including Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, who were arrested and later released.

Peruggia hid the painting in his Paris apartment for two years. Police visited him twice but failed to find it, even as a detective wrote his report leaning on the table under which the painting was concealed. In 1913, Peruggia traveled to Florence and contacted Alfredo Geri, an art gallery owner, using the name Leonardo V. Geri alerted Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi, who authenticated the painting, and police arrested Peruggia at his hotel. He claimed he acted for patriotic reasons, wanting to return the painting to Italy, which he believed had been stolen by Napoleon. However, letters to his father and his attempt to sell the painting suggested a financial motive, and he ultimately profited nothing.

At his trial, the court accepted his patriotic motive to some degree and gave him a lenient sentence of one year and 15 days, reduced to seven months on appeal. A court psychiatrist called him an 'imbecile' after Peruggia answered a riddle incorrectly, which contributed to the leniency. After release, Peruggia served in the Italian army during World War I, was captured by Austria-Hungary and held as a prisoner of war for two years. He later married, had a daughter, and returned to France, working as a painter decorator under his birth name, Pietro Peruggia. He died of a heart attack on his 44th birthday in 1925, and his death went largely unreported at the time.

The theft made the Mona Lisa one of the world's most famous paintings, as newspaper headlines and the massive police investigation drew unprecedented public attention. Peruggia's story has been retold in films, songs, and television shows, and his 1909 mugshot was sold at auction in 2012. A later theory, based solely on a 1932 magazine article, suggested the theft was masterminded by a con man who sold forged copies, but there is no external confirmation for this claim.