We are at the beginning of the 20th century, in Paris.It is a quiet Monday in the capital of culture, the sun rises, the morning is fresh, everyone goes to work, some quiet, others half busy, the most annoyed, after all it is Monday, anyone would prefer to stay another time in their bed, have a coffee, forget a while about the world.Nothing seems strange, you hardly notice an important absence, in the Louvre museum a piece is missing, and not any piece, has been lost La Gioconda, also known as La Mona Lisa, one of the most important works of Leonardo Da Vinci , and soon they will have their main suspect, Pablo Picasso.the story of when Picasso was accused of having participated in the theft of the Gioconda.
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Picasso was charged with the theft of the Gioconda
1.The poor security of the Louvre Museum
The theft of the Gioconda has gone down in history as one of the secrets of the Louvre Museum: On Monday, August 21, 1911, the Gioconda, which was exhibited among other canvases in the Salon Carre of the Museum of the Louvre , disappeared from the place it occupied in one of its walls: nothing more and nothing less than one of the most admired internationally famous works of art.However, no one seemed to pay attention to that emptiness on the museum wall, the museum guards and curators took more than 24 hours to complete.give notice of the fact, because at first the theft of the Gioconda had gone unnoticed. The police found no clues to the thief of the Mona Lisa and one of the lines of investigation that followed implied one of the most distinguished Spanish artists that at that time I was 30 years old, Pablo Picasso.
Unlike other major museums in the world, such as the Italian Uffizi who had screwed the artworks to the walls to prevent their theft, the Louvre Museum had not taken any measures to protect the works they exhibited .The canvases hung on the walls without any protection, because they seemed to believe that no one could get them off the hook.In fact, a few months before the theft of the Gioconda, a journalist spent the night in one of the Sarcophagi exposed to denounce the null security measures of the museum, despite which the museum did nothing to guarantee the protection of the works.
Within the mysteries of the Mona Lisa is, without a doubt, its disappearance.When it happened, the lack of control was such that it took more than 24 hours to raise the alarm , why? As the museum then explained to the authorities, the guards believed that the work was in the process of maintenance and, therefore, they were not alarmed.Something surprising considering that this museum was by then, and still is today, one of the most visited not only in Paris, but in the world, as well as one of the great essentials in any compilation on what to see in Paris.
It was in the morning of August 22 when the authorities began to worry.Probably someone wanted to confirm the whereabouts of the Gioconda, or someone was surprised that, after a day without being in place, the void was not filled with any work or the piece had been returned to the exhibition.when they began to wonder where the Mona Lisa was, and that was when they realized the theft of the Gioconda: the work had been stolen, but how? When? And by whom?
As immediate as possible, the authorities were given notice and that was when the investigations began.There were few clues, however, the authorities had a suspicion almost certainly: as they believed, it had been the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, at that time residing in Paris.
Thereafter the famous museum would spend a whole week with its doors closed, to give way to research and relevant inquiries. When the museum received again visits, the following Monday, the biggest news of that time was that the Louvre had He broke his record of tickets, but not because people went to see the remaining works, but precisely because everyone wanted to see with his own eyes that famous emptiness on the wall.
2.Why Picasso was accused of the theft of the Mona Lisa?
At that time the Mona Lisa was not as famous as it is today, but barely spread the word about the theft, the newspapers of the world dedicated their first pages to talk about this famous Leonardo Da Vinci's work, and the different theories of theft.Among those, one of the main ones was that the theft was attributable to the Picasso Band, a group formed, according to the authorities, by several emerging artists who were looking for dethrone all the great works of human history, but why was the robbery attributed to Picasso? What evidence was there?
The reason why Pablo Picasso was accused of the theft of the Gioconda has two central aspects.On the one hand the purely ideological, since it was known that he and his friends they had stated in various writings that all old art should be destroyed to make way for “new art.” These statements alone were not enough to make him suspicious of other artists who lived in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, However, Picasso presented an interesting antecedent regarding the theft of arts, an issue that, when it was discovered, gave rise to the authorities not only to suspect the painter, but to make him the center of the investigation.
But what was that background? It turns out that Pablo Picasso had been discovered, four years earlier, in possession of certain Iberian statuettes that had disappeared from the museum, which had been stolen by the Belgian Joseph Gery Pieret, and then went to the Picasso workshop who, despite knowing the origin of the sculptures, he could not resist buying them for the typical price of 50 euros.This was what caused the authorities to turn on all the alarms regarding the famous Spanish artist, and the poet was also included in the list of suspects and novelist Guillaume Apollinaire, friend of Picasso who, during the purchase and sale of the statuettes, had acted as an intermediary.
By the way that, with respect to the Iberian sculptures, art historians affirm that they were used by Picasso to make the first cubist painting of the artist from Malaga: «Las Senoritas de Avignon» , which was finished painting the same year in which the tattoos were acquired by the painter, in 1907.But let's continue with the theft of the Gioconda and the suspicions that the authorities put on Picasso.
3.Released for lack of evidence
In what seems like a rocambolesque story, Picasso and Apollinaire tried to get rid of the statuettes Iberians throwing them into the Seine, but finally they did not, perhaps because deep down, despite their ideological postulates, it hurt horribly to destroy any work of art.As they had to get rid of the sculptures, Pieret took the opportunity to make his triumphal entry, taking them with him to resell them.Craso error, because Pieret was found in fraganti by the police, which seemed to give the authorities an important clue regarding the theft of the Gioconda.
To the Belgian he had no choice, he had to plead guilty to minor and compulsive robberies in the warehouses of the Louvre Museum.As the police had no other clues, and they were subject to innumerable pressures, they tried to blame him for stealing La Gioconda, ext rowing that the negotia.However, despite having no evidence, the police thought they finally found something that would lead them to the painting, and conjectured that it was an international band of theft of works of art formed by Pieret and his friends, the Spanish Picasso and the writer of Russian origin, Apollinaire.
A month after the robbery of the Gioconda, Apollinaire was arrested and subjected to various interrogations.because, according to the story, a few days later the police went to look for a Picasso dead of fear.He was also interrogated and, it is said, even cried during the confrontation against the authorities, but the peak moment of the accusation to Picasso for the theft of the Gioconda it was, without a doubt, when the authorities took Apollinaire to the room where Picasso was, who, dead of nerves, assured that he did not know the poet, and even more, that he never I had seen in his life.
"When I said that I saw Guillaume's expression change.The blood under his face.I'm still ashamed," Picasso said years later.
However, both the poet and the painter were released, the suspicion that fell on Picasso for the theft of the Gioconda soon vanished and the authorities, still unable to find the work, were getting desperate more and more.names would not be completely clean, however, at least until 1913, when The case of the theft of the Gioconda was resolved, thus determining that the great cubist painter had nothing to do with this.
3.The author of the theft of the Gioconda
Picasso remained exonerated, yes, but then, who was the artifice of the robbery of the Mona Lisa? This doubt persisted in the authorities for two more years, and during all that time they searched unsuccessfully until, finally, they discovered that the person responsible for the theft of the Gioconda had been Vincenzo Peruggia , a painter of a broad brush and former worker of the Louvre .Peruggia had been trapped, almost two and a half years later, trying to sell the artwork.
Did you know that Picasso had been accused of steal the Gioconda? Have you seen the Fernando Colomo movie that talks about the case, «La Banda de Picasso«? Leave your opinion in the comments, we will be looking forward to reading you!
If you want to know more about Picasso, who he was and how he thought, do not forget to read our dedicated entry to who Pablo Picasso was, and do not forget to take a look Take a look at these Picasso phrases to learn more about the Spanish genius of Cubism, and, furthermore, we invite you to read The Women of Picasso, an article for you to know another famous fascist of the Spanish painter.
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