Vanished Smile (19 page)

PERUGGIA MUG SHOT
The self-confessed thief, Vincenzo “Leonardo” Peruggia.(Courtesy of Roger-Viollet/Getty Images)

PERUGGIA IN COURT
Standing trial in Florence for the theft of Mona Lisa. (Courtesy of Roger-Viollet/Getty Images)

FLORENCE IS NEVER
its best in extremes. In a city that celebrates civilization as restraint, winter is rarely the finest season. It swirls down from the boney Apennines and settles in the bowl of the Arno River, creating an atmosphere as sullen and dejected as a Renaissance artist without a patron. The winter of 1913 would be the exception. Overnight, the mood of the city became euphoric, and the jubilation spread until the entire country was celebrating. No one was more surprised or delighted by the unexpected turn of events than Alfredo Geri, a dealer in art and antiques.

With his substantial presence, Geri oozed prosperity. He had a stocky build with broad shoulders, a tenor's barrel chest, and a gold watch chain looping across an ample paunch—the expansive figure of a man who spent considerable time wining and dining his clients. His elegant shop on Via Borgo Ognissanti, a short stroll from the Ponte Vecchio, had an enviable clientele. Geri furnished the villas and palazzos of Florence with choice works. Among his favored customers were Eleonora Duse, whose shadowy stagecraft made Bernhardt appear histrionic, and her
inamorato
, the mercurial novelist and showman Gabriele d'Annunzio.

Anticipating a busy Christmas season, Geri had placed an ad in a number of Italian newspapers, including
Corriere della Sera
and
La Stampa
, offering to pay generously for fine artwork.
The response was considerable, and he spent several mornings sorting through the promising and the preposterous replies. There was always a handful of letters offering to part with family “treasures”—a favorite pet stuffed and moth-eaten or a rusted nail from the True Cross. One response stood out from the rest. Dated November 29, 1913, it was postmarked Poste Restante, Place de la Republique, Paris, and signed “Leonardo.” At first Geri dismissed the letter as either a prank or the delusion of an unhinged person. But something about it, the terse wording, the unsophisticated sentiment, the flourish of the signature—he could not pinpoint exactly what—kept nagging. Geri reread the letter several times:

La Gioconda
had been missing from the Louvre for more than two years, and in that time, Mona Lisa look-alikes had been popping up all over Europe. The international press reported each sighting, however bogus.

Mona Lisa had been spotted crossing the border into Switzerland and slinking out of France at Le Havre and Dunkirk. She was glimpsed hopping a freight train headed for Holland by way of Namur, Liege, and Brussels, and seen boarding the steamer
Cordillera
, headed for South America. Police in Bordeaux, where the ship was docked, searched the steamer and delayed her departure but discovered no stowaway. Wrong ship, maybe. Mona Lisa was also reported boarding the S.S.
La Champagne
, bound for South America.

In August, an obviously well-to-do English gentleman had burst into the British embassy in Paris one evening with a
painting that he suspected might be the missing masterpiece. The flustered ambassador immediately called in the French authorities. Mona Lisa appeared authentic down to the slight crack near the top left corner of the panel. After subjecting the painting to a minute examination, a team of experts from the Ministry of Beaux Arts and the Louvre concluded unanimously that the age was right and the quality exceptional, but the Englishman's Mona Lisa was a copy.

In September, a Russian newspaper reported that the stolen painting was hanging on the wall of a private gallery in St. Petersburg. She was sighted in New York City a few weeks later: On November i,
The New York Times
reported that the Secret Service had staked out an apartment on the corner of Intervale Avenue in the Bronx.

It was almost inevitable that an offer for one of the false Mona Lisas would arrive in Alfredo Geri's morning mail. The dealer read the note again. When Mona Lisa disappeared, Corrado Ricci, Italy's foremost Renaissance scholar and the minister of art, had called for patience. Since the painting would be impossible to sell, Ricci had predicted, “The thief will eventually give himself away.” Two years of waiting had yielded only false hope. But if the waiting were over and Geri recovered the lost da Vinci, he would be a hero and an even wealthier man. Publicity, celebrity, and many lire would be his.

Geri brought the letter to Giovanni Poggi, the director of the Uffizi Gallery. Poggi was even more skeptical. At best, the painting being offered might be a decent copy. Nevertheless, he advised Geri to write back, saying that he would have to see the painting to make an offer.

“Leonardo” answered by return mail, inviting the dealer to visit him. Geri was a prudent man, and the vision of two Italians in Paris with the kidnapped painting alarmed him. He replied with a counter-offer, asking “Leonardo” to bring Mona Lisa to Italy and suggesting Milan as an intermediate locale.
“Leonardo” was clearly impatient. He wanted to rendezvous immediately, but the dates he proposed were confusing. After a flurry of correspondence, and with a creeping sense that the affair was an elaborate prank, Geri set a firm date. They would meet in Milan in two weeks, on December 22, three days before Christmas. In the meantime, he tried to put “Leonardo” out of his mind.

On Wednesday, December 10, the shop on Via Borgo Ognissanti was unusually crowded. One customer stood out from the usual clientele. He browsed through the antiques leisurely, as if he had time to kill. After Geri had ushered out the other customers, the man introduced himself. “Leonardo” had brought Mona Lisa home to Florence.

By all accounts, the true Leonardo had been a Renaissance hunk—tall and graceful, with gracious manners. His stand-in was an entirely different type—vain, slightly unctuous, inclined to preen. Probably in his early thirties, he was a slight, edgy man, not more than five feet three inches, with a dark complexion, slick pomaded black hair, and a handlebar mustache waxed at the tips. His demeanor was ingratiating; the cut of his suit was cheap. He said that he was registered as Leonardo Vincenzo at the Albergo Tripoli-Italia on Via Panzani, a short walk away. The hotel was in the vicinity of the Borgo San Lorenzo, a few blocks from the Renaissance home where Lisa del Giocondo had sat for the true Leonardo.

Caught off guard by the unexpected turn of events, Geri asked “Leonardo” to come back the next day at three o'clock, He knew the Uffizi director was in Bologna, and he did not want to examine Mona Lisa alone. Geri immediately telegraphed Director Poggi, who rushed back to Florence. When he arrived at the shop the next afternoon at three o'clock, Geri was alone. The dealer had his gold pocket watch out and was glued to the excruciatingly slow movement of the hands. Time ticked by—five minutes, seven minutes, ten minutes.

Director Poggi had been wary from the start. Now the entire episode appeared to be one more chapter in Mona Lisa's tangled history. As he put on his coat to return to the Uffizi, “Leonardo” appeared. The director was a reserved man, not given to displays of emotion. Even with familiars, his manners were formal. “Leonardo” never hesitated. He grasped Poggi's hand in both of his and pumped it with enthusiasm, saying how glad he was to shake the hand of the man entrusted with the art treasure of Florence.

The winter light was fading when the three men began to walk together, north along Via del Moro in the general direction of Santa Maria Novella, to the Albergo Tripoli-Italia. Poggi and Geri had grown nervous waiting, and their apprehension deepened as they approached the hotel. “Leonardo” seemed oblivious. It was his first trip to Florence, and like a tourist on holiday, he sauntered along, taking in the sights around him.

At some point in the course of the afternoon, the conversation turned from art to commerce. Memories were selective and contradictory, and which man was the more honest may have been a question of degree. According to Geri, “Leonardo” raised the subject of payment before they left the shop. “‘Leonardo’ answered all my questions with much assurance and told me he wanted five hundred thousand lire, equivalent to $2.14 million today, for his picture,” Geri said. “I said I was prepared to pay this sum, if she was, in truth, the eternal
Gioconda.”

According to “Leonardo,” Geri proposed the payment as they were walking to the hotel. While admitting that he expected the Italian government to compensate him “for the great service rendered,” “Leonardo” insisted, “I did not take the picture through a desire for gain, but wished to accomplish a good and holy work by returning to my country one of the many treasures stolen from it.”

Whichever account is the true one, by the time they arrived at the hotel, an agreement had been reached to ransom Mona Lisa for the sum proposed. It remained only for Director Poggi to identify her unequivocally.

The Tripoli-Italia was as shabby and shopworn as a secondhand suit, and “Leonardo's” room was on the third floor, up two steep flights. Conversation evaporated on the climb. The single room was barely large enough for a bed and an armoire, let alone three men, two of them on the portly side. As Geri and Poggi crowded in, “Leonardo” locked the door behind them and, without a word, dragged a case from under the bed. It was white wood of medium size.

In the cramped, silent room, the smallest sound seemed amplified: the bolt snapping in the door, the scrape of the case on the bare floor, the complaint of the springs as “Leonardo” heaved the box onto the bed. He opened it and began dumping out the contents, all “wretched objects,” Geri would say. Woolen underwear, rumpled shirts, a pair of worn-down shoes, a squashed hat, a mandolin, and a few tools piled up on the floor. “Leonardo” had even packed some paintbrushes. When his meager possessions were strewn across the floor, he lifted a false bottom in the case. Under it was a package bundled in red silk, which he placed on the bed. Still without a word, “Leonardo” began to unwrap it.

Geri described the moment: “To our amazed eyes, the divine
Gioconda
appeared intact and marvelously preserved. We carried it to a window to compare it to a photograph we had brought with us. Poggi studied it and we had no doubt the painting was authentic. The Louvre catalogue number and brand on the back matched the photograph.”

While admitting that she appeared to be the genuine article, Director Poggi expressed reservation. He would have to bring Mona Lisa back to the Uffizi and study the painting beside
other works by da Vinci before he could validate its authenticity. “Leonardo” agreed without argument.

With Mona Lisa once again wrapped in her red silk mantle, Poggi and Geri carried her down the stairs. They knew they had the true Mona Lisa in their arms. Although they had contained their excitement in front of her kidnapper, they were practically running, afraid “Leonardo” would change his mind and come after them. As they fled past the front desk with their package, the concierge stopped them and insisted on seeing what they had concealed in the red silk. The thief had walked out of the Louvre carrying Mona Lisa with no questions asked, but the director of the Uffizi was stopped trying to leave the Albergo Tripoli-Italia and accused of filching a second-rate reproduction from one of the rooms. “If the guardians of the Louvre had had the same curiosity,” Geri would say, “the
Gioconda
would never have come to Florence.”