Tony Talks History
The Man That Made The Mona Lisa Famous - Vincenzo Peruggia
In October 2025, thieves spent four minutes inside the Louvre and got away with eight pieces of the French crown jewels. But the most famous theft in the museum's history happened in 1911, when a handyman in a white smock walked out with the Mona Lisa under his arm, and nobody noticed she was gone for more than a day. This is the story of Vincenzo Peruggia: the doorknob, the crowds who queued to stare at an empty wall, Picasso in tears in front of a judge, the painting that sat in a trunk for 28 months because nobody could buy it, and how one theft turned a quiet masterpiece into the most famous painting in the world.
The numbers in this video
€88MAbout what the eight pieces of royal jewellery taken from the Louvre in October 2025 were worth.Source: Curator's estimate via the prosecutor, PBS / CBS
60Detectives the police put on the case after the Mona Lisa vanished in 1911.Source: CrimeReads (Hoobler)
500,000 lireWhat Peruggia asked for in the letter he signed Leonardo, while saying he wanted the painting to go back to Italy.Source: Florence State Archive; History.com
100,000More than this many people came to see her in the first two days after she went back on her wall in the Louvre, on 4 January 1914.Source: Wikipedia; Smithsonian
$100MWhat the painting was valued at for its 1962 trip to America. Nobody actually bought the insurance.Source: Guinness World Records
20,000About how many people a day crowd in front of her today.Source: Smithsonian (2026)
Every number has a source
Chapters
- 0:00The Louvre Heist
- 1:27Hero or Thief?
- 2:01The Painting Nobody Knew
- 3:36The Glazier
- 4:32The Monday Morning
- 6:40The Empty Wall
- 8:22The Thumbprint
- 9:31Picasso and the Poet
- 11:00The Trunk
- 12:41The Six Fakes Legend
- 13:50The Letter From Leonardo
- 15:38Coming Home
- 16:23The Trial
- 17:55Why She Is Behind Glass
What we left out
Claims we found and could not stand behind, so they are not in the video.
A 50,000 franc reward reported by another paper. It could not be verified, so the video uses the 40,000 francs offered by a French magazine.
The claim that 80% of visitors come to the Louvre for her. It could not be verified, so the video only says that for many of them she is the reason they came.
The version in which Peruggia died in 1947. The research marks it as wrong. He died on 8 October 1925, his 44th birthday.
