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Tuesday Trivia - Late Edition
Aug. 21st, 2018 04:10 pmI'm back from my all-day Rotary field trip, so have this week's trivia:
On this date in 1911, the Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in history, was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian and former Louvre employee, entered the museum on Monday, August 21 around 7 am, through the door where the other Louvre workers were entering. The museum was closed that day. He said he wore one of the white smocks that museum employees customarily wore and was indistinguishable from the other workers. When the Salon Carré, where the Mona Lisa hung, was empty, he lifted the painting off the four iron pegs that secured it to the wall and took it to a nearby service staircase. He took off his smock and wrapped it around the painting, tucked it under his arm, and left the Louvre through the same door he had entered.
Peruggia hid the painting in his apartment in Paris. Supposedly, when police arrived to search his apartment and question him, they accepted his alibi that he had been working at a different location on the day of the theft.
After keeping the painting hidden in a trunk in his apartment for two years, Peruggia returned to Italy with it. He kept it in his apartment in Florence, Italy but grew impatient, and was finally caught when he contacted Alfredo Geri, the owner of an art gallery in Florence. Geri, after taking the painting for "safekeeping", informed the police, who arrested Peruggia at his hotel. After its recovery, the painting was exhibited all over Italy with banner headlines rejoicing its return and then returned to the Louvre in 1913. While the painting was famous before the theft, the notoriety it received from the newspaper headlines and the large scale police investigation helped the artwork become one of the best known in the world.
Source – Wikipedia.
On this date in 1911, the Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in history, was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian and former Louvre employee, entered the museum on Monday, August 21 around 7 am, through the door where the other Louvre workers were entering. The museum was closed that day. He said he wore one of the white smocks that museum employees customarily wore and was indistinguishable from the other workers. When the Salon Carré, where the Mona Lisa hung, was empty, he lifted the painting off the four iron pegs that secured it to the wall and took it to a nearby service staircase. He took off his smock and wrapped it around the painting, tucked it under his arm, and left the Louvre through the same door he had entered.
Peruggia hid the painting in his apartment in Paris. Supposedly, when police arrived to search his apartment and question him, they accepted his alibi that he had been working at a different location on the day of the theft.
After keeping the painting hidden in a trunk in his apartment for two years, Peruggia returned to Italy with it. He kept it in his apartment in Florence, Italy but grew impatient, and was finally caught when he contacted Alfredo Geri, the owner of an art gallery in Florence. Geri, after taking the painting for "safekeeping", informed the police, who arrested Peruggia at his hotel. After its recovery, the painting was exhibited all over Italy with banner headlines rejoicing its return and then returned to the Louvre in 1913. While the painting was famous before the theft, the notoriety it received from the newspaper headlines and the large scale police investigation helped the artwork become one of the best known in the world.
Source – Wikipedia.
