The Most Expensive Object Ever Stolen
Theft has long been a part of the human experience. Examples of its prevalence can even be found in ancient mythology: Prometheus stole fire from the gods; Odysseus and Diomedes snuck into Troy to steal the Palladium; and in Hindu mythology, Garuda stole the vase of Amrita from the gods to free his mother from Kadru, the mother of serpents.
Of course, theft is very much a real-world concern as well, with the most audacious holdups — the likes of bank jobs, diamond heists, or great train robberies — sometimes gaining almost legendary status. But in the annals of crime, few heists, if any, have captured the world’s imagination quite like the disappearance of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” from the Louvre in 1911. Not only did the theft of this Renaissance masterpiece shock the art world, but it was also the most valuable object ever stolen.
The Theft of the “Mona Lisa”
On August 21, 1911, one of the most audacious heists in art history was successfully brought to fruition. The man responsible for this daring crime was Vincenzo Peruggia. The Italian wasn’t a criminal mastermind by trade — he was, in fact, a painter and decorator. But Peruggia had worked in the Louvre previously, and one of his jobs was constructing glass cases to protect works of art. He was therefore familiar with the entire museum and had insider knowledge of how to quickly and quietly remove a painting from the wall.
On the evening of Sunday, August 20, Peruggia entered the Louvre dressed in the same kind of white work overalls worn by the museum caretakers. He then hid inside a storage closet, where he remained until the following morning, when the Louvre was closed and foot traffic was light. At around 7:15 a.m., Peruggia poked his head out, checked to see if the coast was clear, and then headed straight for the nearby Salon Carré, where the “Mona Lisa” was housed. Then, he simply took the painting off the wall, carried it to an adjacent service stairwell, and removed the relatively small canvas from its protective glass frame. Hiding it under his overalls, he walked out of the museum undetected.
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An International Investigation
Initially, staff at the Louvre didn’t realize the “Mona Lisa” had been stolen. It wasn’t uncommon for paintings to be removed for cleaning or photography, so the blank space that the portrait normally occupied was ignored for more than a day. But then, when people started to ask questions, the whole story exploded, sparking an international manhunt and unprecedented media coverage. At the time, the “Mona Lisa” wasn’t nearly as famous as it is today. But the media frenzy surrounding the theft catapulted the painting to new heights, and all of a sudden there was global public interest in Leonardo’s enigmatic masterpiece.
French police soon began interrogating hundreds of suspects. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested and imprisoned thanks to his associations with the light-fingered Joseph Gery Pieret, a man known to have stolen small items from the Louvre before. Apollinaire then implicated none other than Pablo Picasso, who had recently bought stolen sculptures from Pieret. (We don’t know if Picasso was aware they were stolen.) At one point, the American tycoon and art lover J.P. Morgan was also suspected of commissioning the theft. All of these men were found to be innocent, and the investigation dragged on.
For more than two years, the “Mona Lisa” sat hidden in Peruggia’s modest Paris apartment, where he would often take it out to gaze upon the masterpiece — he poetically stated, after his arrest, “I fell a victim to her smile and feasted my eyes on my treasure every evening. I fell in love with her.” Eventually, Peruggia tried to sell the painting, which led to his downfall. The potential buyers, upon seeing the genuine “Mona Lisa,” reported the thief to the authorities. On December 11, 1913, police arrested Peruggia and the “Mona Lisa” was returned to its rightful place in the Louvre.
The Most Valuable Object Ever Stolen
Since the theft of the “Mona Lisa,” many other famous and valuable paintings have been stolen. For example, Edvard Munch’s “Scream,” worth $120 million, was stolen twice, in 1994 and 2004, and “The Concert” by Johannes Vermeer, valued at $200 million, was stolen in 1990. Of course, it’s not only paintings that get the big bucks. A $3 million violin — known as the Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius — was nabbed in 1995. And in 2003, the Saliera, a sculpture and functional salt cellar worth about $57 million, was taken from a museum in Vienna. Even Dorothy’s ruby red slippers from The Wizard of Oz were stolen, before later selling at auction for $28 million. And back in 1907, someone stole the Irish Crown Jewels — worth at least $5.5 million today —from Dublin Castle, in a case that remains unsolved.
The “Mona Lisa,” however, is in a different league. It’s hard to put a price on the famed painting, but it did receive an insurance valuation of $100 million in 1962, equivalent to about $865 million today — the highest insurance valuation ever recorded for a painting. This alone makes the “Mona Lisa” the most valuable object ever stolen, as recognized by Guinness World Records. More recently, in 2014, experts valued the painting at a whopping $2.5 billion, far eclipsing the value of any other stolen object in history.
