Would you believe the famous da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" was once stolen? You don't? Well look at this :D

The theft of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 ranks pretty high of art heists in history. On August 20, 1911, at the Louvre, one of the world’s best-known museums in Paris, an Italian employee of the museum, Vincenzo Perugia, simply slipped the painting under his jacket and walked out of the door.

The painting was discovered missing the next day, yet no one contacted the police. How come? You may ask, but it was actually because the workers at the museum assumed that the painting had been taken to the in-house studio to be photographed for marketing purposes! And still it wasn’t until the next day that the alarm bells went off and the museum immediately called the police. Surprisingly one of the world’s best-known museum like that was cleared of visitors in no time! And later on a thorough search was conducted of the premises. The Mona Lisa was nowhere to be found. The police interviewed as many people as they could who might have any information concerning the lost masterpiece, and so, the theft instantly became an international sensation

On December 10, 1913, Vincenzo, using the alias Leonardo Vincenzo, spoke with art dealer Alfredo Geri at his Florence, Italy, office. Vincenzo told Geri that the Mona Lisa was in his possession and that he wanted to sell it for 500,000 lire. Geri was initially skeptical, yet he decided to view the painting at Vincenzo’s hotel room the next day.

Geri and his friend, Giovanni Poggi, the director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, met with Vincenzo as planned and talked about the painting.  Vincenzo gave Geri and Poggi permission to take the painting to a museum as he waited patiently in his hotel room. After the painting was authenticated, police arrested Vincenzo, who eventually admitted his crime.

He was jailed for just a few months and was hailed a hero by the Italian public. Can you believe it? A hero! For stealing a worldwide most known art piece just because he believed the work should be reclaimed by his country!! But well, despite his efforts, Mona Lisa finally made its way back to the Louvre in 1913! :D

Well my little good children, I hope you did enjoy it because I actually did! :B  Because, I think it’s quite interesting how that easy it was to get such an art work out of a really popular and big museum without being noticed! AND then to hide during 2 years aprox. Don’t you think so? If you’ll like, you can look for more specific information in the web pages from which I took out this data. Well, see you next week! :)

-447 words.

Bibliography.-

Bell, Rachael. truTV. "Sensational Art Heists." http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/outlaws/major_art_thefts/index.html.

Iqbal, Nosheen. guardian.co.uk. Thursday 19 de February de 2009.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/feb/19/greatest-art-heists-in-pictures#/?picture=343500670&index=0

Introducing my blog :)

Hey there! Well people, as you may notice (since this is my first publication), I’m new with all this ‘blog thing’, so please be patient with me. Now, let’s get serious. The main reason I started this blog is because my English teacher asked me to, BUT maybe I’ll keep uploading more stuff when I’m done with my main purpose: finish this project.  Please don’t start getting bored just by knowing this blog is meant for work, because I’ll my best to make it as interesting as I can, hope you’ll enjoy it since the beginning. Finally, getting to the point, what I’m asked to do for the project is to keep posting about a certain topic and will be (rumbling drums)……, ART HEISTS! Cool, right? Well, I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not actually familiarized with the topic, actually I’m almost out of tune in this area, but I’ll keep investigating about it and then I’ll pass my wisdom to you through this blog, so if I’m wrong with some information I post, don’t be afraid of commenting! I’ll love to learn new things, especially if that information actually corrects something I’m mistaken with.

O.K. Now, with my purpose and super explanation of what this is all going to be about, let’s start with the topic. First of all, as the words say, art heist is the act of stealing art, but the most common art stolen have been paintings, so as we may go on with the blog, I’ll tell some of the most impressive art heists there have happened so far. The reason why art heists happen may vary, depending on thieves’ necessities, of course I’m not justifying their acts, but despite that we may not understand why a piece of art is that much important that people really care about it not getting stolen, so that we can get this a little better I’ll give you these information I found out in guardian.co.uk, a U.K . online newspaper that shows about some of the most important art heist till so far… “The Gardner art heist remains the most audacious art theft in history, with works worth up to $500m (£350m) stolen and the mystery still unsolved.” £350m! That’s a huge amount of money, so now you can get why does this kind of things happens. The most audacious theft in history! Amazing. So, next week I’ll post some other interesting thing, I hope you’ll enjoy it!