“Unlocking the Enigma: Discover the Hidden Mysteries Behind the Mona Lisa’s Smile”
The press had a field day. French newspapers began a bidding war to see who could offer the largest reward for information leading to the painting’s safe return, such as the Paris-Journal which offered 50,000 francs (about €198,000 Euros or $220,000 today).
When the museum finally reopened in early September, visitors surged in just to see the place where the Mona Lisa had hung. Budding author Franz Kafka himself would go visit the Louvre to look at the empty section of the wall, noting in his journal, “the excitement and the knots of people, as if the Mona Lisa had just been stolen.”
Yet, despite everything, there were no solid leads and the trail was completely cold.
That is, until police were tipped off on the whereabouts of some other items that had been stolen from the Louvre.
This brings us to Pablo Picasso.
When Picasso made his way to Paris in 1900, among many other artistically minded friends he made was poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire, in turn, had a secretary by the name of Géry Pieret. Knowing Picasso’s love of the 3rd and 4th century Iberian sculptures then on display at the Louvre, Pieret decided to simply go to the Louvre and take a couple of them. As it turns out, given the low density of security guards at the facility relative to its immense size, the theft apparently wasn’t difficult.
When Pieret presented the statues to Picasso, he loved them, with Apollinaire and Picasso ultimately paying Pieret 100 francs (about $440 today) for the stolen items. Picasso would actually go on to use the face of one of the statues in his famed 1907 masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.
