A little wonder, every day

The Mona Lisa theft and the six-copy story

AI-generated symbolic reconstruction of an empty museum wall after the Mona Lisa was stolen.

1911 photograph of the empty place where the Mona Lisa hung in the Louvre’s Salon Carré, reproduced from a 1914 Century Magazine article. Photographer unknown. Public domain in the United States and jurisdictions with anonymous-work terms of 95 years or fewer since publication. Original page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mona_Lisa_stolen-1911.jpg. Reused from fact 2423.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, faithful reproduction of a public-domain two-dimensional painting; Wikimedia Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0. Original page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mona_Lisa.jpg. Reused from fact 2316.

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AI-generated symbolic reconstruction of an empty museum wall after the Mona Lisa was stolen.

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The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre on August 21, 1911, and recovered in Florence in December 1913, after Vincenzo Peruggia tried to sell it to an art dealer. The story that a mastermind sold six copies as originals comes from a 1932 magazine article and has no independent corroboration.