1. Vincenzo Peruggia was an Italian decorator best known for stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, a museum in Paris where he had briefly worked as glazier, on 21 August 1911.
19 Facts About Vincenzo Peruggia
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Vincenzo Peruggia was born Pietro Vincenzo Antonio Peruggia, the son of Celeste Rossi and Giacomo Peruggia, on 8 October 1881 in Dumenza, a small village in the Alps of Italy near the border with Switzerland.
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Vincenzo Peruggia's job required him to construct strong cases for some of the arts in the museum, including the one for the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci; he was likely involved in Mona Lisas box frame construction and would have known how to open it in minutes.
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In 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia perpetrated what has been described as the greatest art theft of the 20th century.
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When Vincenzo Peruggia hid the painting, he was stuck in a locked service door.
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Vincenzo Peruggia then hid the painting in his apartment in Paris.
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Vincenzo Peruggia had left a thumbprint on the glass securing the painting, and his fingerprints and photo were in police files as he had been arrested before.
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Vincenzo Peruggia kept it in his apartment in Florence for some time.
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Peruggia eventually grew impatient and was finally caught when he contacted Alfredo Geri, the owner of an art gallery in Florence, using the name Leonardo V Geri's story conflicts with Peruggia's but it was clear that Peruggia expected a reward for returning the painting to what he regarded as its homeland.
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Vincenzo Peruggia said he did it for a patriotic reason as he wanted to bring the painting back for display in Italy, in Vincenzo Peruggia's own words "after it was stolen from Italy" by Napoleon.
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When Vincenzo Peruggia worked at the Louvre, he learned of how Napoleon plundered many Italian works of art during the Napoleonic Wars.
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The question of money is confirmed by letters that Vincenzo Peruggia sent to his father after the theft.
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Vincenzo Peruggia was sent to jail for one year and 15 days but was hailed as a great patriot in Italy and on appeal served only seven months.
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Vincenzo Peruggia later married Annunciata Rossi, had one daughter named Celestina, returned to France, and continued to work as a painter decorator using his birth name Pietro Peruggia.
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Vincenzo Peruggia died from a heart attack on 8 October 1925 in the Paris suburb of Saint-Maur-des-Fosses.
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Vincenzo Peruggia was buried in the Conde Cemetery of Saint-Maur-des-Fosses.
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Sometime in the 1950s, Vincenzo Peruggia's remains were exhumed and relocated into the cemetery bonelocker.
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Vincenzo Peruggia's theft is part of popular culture, and over the years it has been celebrated in books, films, and songs including the "Mona Lisa" written in 1978 by Ivan Graziani.
19.
In Der Raub der Mona Lisa, an early German sound film, Vincenzo Peruggia was portrayed by Willi Forst.