The Vanishing of the Mona Lisa: A Novel

Summary

Valfierno, the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa is a fascinating novel of intrigue based on a real event at the dawn of the twentieth century: the disappearance of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa from the Louvre Museum, on August 22, 1911. The police at the time immediately suspected a group of artists who flouted their hatred of all academic painting - among them the young Pablo Picasso; and the soldier-poet Apollinaire, who was detained briefly for the crime. But time passed and the authorities found no clues about the location of either the painting or the actual thieves. Two years later, in 1913, a certain Vicenzo Peruggia was picked up in Florence with the masterpiece in his possession; yet he claimed that he had only wanted to restore it to its rightful home: Italy.

What had really transpired during those two intervening years and, above all, who could believe that the humble Peruggia had been the mastermind for the heist of the century?