On This Day: Mona Lisa stolen by Louvre handyman wanting to return it to Italy

AUGUST 21, 1911: The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre on this day in 1911 – in an audacious theft by a museum worker that would ensure it became the world’s most famous painting.

Italian handyman Vincenzo Puruggia walked out with the masterpiece under his coat after hiding in a broom cupboard during the day and waiting until night to take it.

He believed the picture belonged in his and artist Leonardo da Vinci’s homeland rather than Paris despite the work having been finished in France in 1517.

Puruggia may also have been persuaded by Argentine conman Eduardo de Valfierno, who allegedly planned to pass off six forgeries as originals following the theft.

The Mona Lisa was eventually found two years later in the handyman’s apartment in Florence after he had tried to sell it to the Uffizi gallery.

It was then exhibited all over Italy, where Puruggia was hailed for his patriotism and jailed for only six months, before being returned to the French capital.

In the end, the theft proved a boon for the Louvre as the Mona Lisa became the most recognised paining in the world after it was repeatedly printed in newspapers,

‘If a different one of Leonardo's works had been stolen, then that would have been the most famous work in the world – not the Mona Lisa,’ Cambridge art historian Professor Noah Charney told CNN in 2011.

‘There was nothing that really distinguished it per se, other than it was a very good work by a very famous artist - that's until it was stolen.

‘The theft is what really skyrocketed its appeal and made it a household name.’

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The Mona Lisa, which has been valued at $760million, now attracts 9.7million visitors a year to the Louvre.

The masterpiece, thought to be a portrait of silk merchant’s wife Lisa del Giocondo, began its life in either 1503 or 1504 in Florence.

But it remained unfinished when da Vinci took the Mona Lisa to France in 1616 following an invite by King Francis I to live in Château du Clos Lucé.

The Italian - who was also a famed mathematician, architect and engineer – finally completed it there a year later.

After da Vinci’s death in 1519, Francis, who was then the leading patron of the arts in Europe, bought the Mona Lisa from the artist’s pupil Salai for 4,000 gold coins.

The tiny picture, which measures just 2ft 6in by 1ft 10in, was then moved to the king’s Palace of Fontainebleau and later Versailles.

Following the French Revolution it became the Republic of France’s property and it has mostly been on display in the Louvre museum in Paris since 1797.

It was removed for safety during the Franco-Prussian and Second World War – and briefly hung on Napoleon’s bedroom wall.

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The famous painting left Europe for the first time when France loaned it to the U.S. for a three-month period in 1963.

President John F Kennedy welcomed the arrival of the masterpiece at a glittering reception in Washington.

It was also attended by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who persuaded French leader Charles de Gaulle to loan the Mona Lisa despite tensions between the two countries.

A U.S. News of the Day newsreel filmed the seemingly happy-yet-haunted fashion icon viewing a subject who was also renowned for her enigmatic smile.

Her husband, President Kennedy, followed and later spoke to the elegantly dressed guests at the National Gallery of Art and greeted French arts minister Andre Malraux.

He made a joke about France’s refusal to buy American nuclear weapons and President de Gaulle’s insistence of building an independent military force.

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Mr Kennedy said: ‘Mr Minister, we in the United States are grateful for this loan from the leading artistic power in the world.

‘But I want to make it clear that, grateful as we are for this painting, we will continue to press ahead with the effort to develop an independent artistic force and power of our own.’

Other than it 1963 trip to America, it has only left France on two other occasions: to Tokyo and Moscow, both in 1974.

French authorities have insisted that she will never go on tour ever again.