Today in History: The Mona Lisa is recovered after two years of searching
Peruggia had previously worked at the Louvre and had participated in the heist with a group of accomplices dressed as Louvre janitors on the morning of 21 August 1911.
On this day in 1913, two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Mona Lisa was recovered from the hotel room occupied by Italian waiter, Vincenzo Peruggia, in Florence.
Leonardo da Vinci, one of the great Italian Renaissance painters, completed The Mona Lisa, a portrait of the wife of wealthy Florentine citizen, Francesco del Gioconda, in 1504. The painting, also known as La Gioconda, depicts the figure of a woman with an enigmatic facial expression that is both aloof and alluring, seated before a visionary landscape.
After the recovery of The Mona Lisa, Peruggia was convicted of the robbery in Italy and spent just 14 months in jail. The Mona Lisa was eventually returned to the Louvre, where it remains, exhibited behind bulletproof glass.
It is arguably the most famous painting in the world and is seen by millions of visitors every year.
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