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REVIEW: Today, the only thief skilled and brazen enough to steal the most famous painting in the world is Carmen Sandiego.
The crimson-clad, fedora-donning master criminal was famous in the early '90s for committing impossible crimes on her PBS show and Broderbund computer games. The fictional crook stole everything from Michelangelo's David to the Great Pyramids of Giza to Mardi Gras. The impossible crimes were part of the whimsy of the concept, as was the inevitable solving of the case and the return of the stolen artifact to its rightful place.
But in 1911, Paris was struck by a Sandiego-level theft, and in her new book "Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa," R.A. Scotti says the threads of the most prodigious art theft in history do not tie up as nicely as previously thought.
On a hot August day in 1911, the Mona Lisa disappeared from its place on the wall in the Louvre, perhaps the world's most famous museum. No one noticed or raised an alarm for almost 48 hours. When the theft was discovered, police were dumbfounded and half-convinced the painting had not even left the building. But after a thorough search of the grounds, the truth was imminent - Da Vinci's masterpiece was gone. The only clue was a missing brass doorknob. Meanwhile, the world exploded with what could only be called Mona Lisa Fever.
Newspapers around the globe ran special editions to get the news out. It pushed impending war off the front page. Thousands of visitors lined up to see the blank wall where the painting once hung, setting new attendance records. Lisa became more than just a pinnacle of Renaissance art; she became a pop culture icon.
Scotti uses her account of l'Affaire de la Joconde to reflect just how much the world was changing at the turn of the first decade. The crime was investigated by Alphonse Bertillon, the father of forensic investigation, and was one of the first investigations to attempt use fingerprints to identify a suspect. It started an outright media war, which sometimes put hype over facts. It showcased the rift between classical art and the growing modernist movement, even making its father, Pablo Picasso, one of the prime suspects in the case.
Scotti provides a novelist's account of the theft and the investigation, mixing a colorful cast of characters with a world in transition. Mona Lisa, she explains, was unsellable on the black market and any of the collectors rich enough to buy it would also be smart enough to keep away.
The mystery then turns the prime question in any crime, who benefits? Is it the rebellious artists of the modern art movement? The Italians taking back a treasure they feel was stolen? Or a mysterious man, known only as "Marquis Eduardo ad Valfierno", who saw crime as art? Scotti goes over all the possibilities, but always leaves the question of the real culprit up in the air.
There is no hint of an Illuminati-level conspiracy in "Vanished Smile". Scotti reviews the intricacies of the painting that have enraptured kings and museum-goers for 500 years, and gives expansive history of the paintings' travels from Leonardo's studio to present-day Paris. Readers familiar with the "The Da Vinci Code" may recognize some Da Vinci trivia that Scotti refers to, but favors the reasonable and realistic where the Dan Brown picked the most salacious theories for his best-selling thriller.
Mona Lisa was missing for two years before showing up again in a Milan motel. In the end, there seems to be little mystery over where she went or even how she left the museum and ultimately, the story Scotti tells is not about the theft. It is about how the world's most famous piece of art achieved a new level of notoriety, transforming from art to icon. As the author puts it, the theft of the Mona Lisa may have taken something bigger than a painting.
"After her theft, Mona Lisa was recovered physically but never spiritually. She was found and lost. Today, Mona Lisa is seen by millions, yet unseen." More than the mystery behind her smile, the question of where that spirit went remains a mystery.
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