“You might as well pretend,” he said, “that one could steal the towers of Notre Dame.”
He was fired.
Stolen or not, it was missing. A color reproduction was hung instead. Then, in December 1912, a more substantial substitute, Raphael’s portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, a man, took the Mona Lisa’s place. The investigation remained open, but hopes of recovering da Vinci’s masterpiece faded.
For two years, while it remained in Peruggia’s trunk, the thief’s letters suggested multiple motivations, with money, rather than nationalism, pre-eminent.
In December 1911 he wrote to a relative that he was convinced that Paris was where he would make his fortune and predicted that prosperity “will arrive in one shot.” A year later, he wrote home: “I am making a vow for you to live long and enjoy the prize that your son is about to realize for you and for all our family.”
Regardless of what his family was expecting — some windfall, perhaps, a reward, a lucky wager, a ransom — Peruggia himself grew impatient.
He returned to Italy with the painting, secreting it in his apartment in Florence, where on Nov. 29, 1913, Alfredo Geri, an antiques dealer, received a letter postmarked from Paris. It said: “The stolen work of Leonardo da Vinci is in my possession. It seems to belong to Italy since its painter was an Italian.”
The letter was signed “Leonardo.”
After contacting Giovanni Poggi, director of Florence’s Uffizi gallery, Geri replied to the letter and on Dec. 10, a 5-foot-3, mustachioed man who identified himself as Leonardo walked into Geri’s shop. He demanded $100,000 in expenses and offered to show Geri and Poggi the painting in his room at the Tripoli-Italia Hotel.
