Paris, Monday 21 August 1911. The Louvre is closed to the public. A man in a white workman's smock walks out of a side door with something wrapped under his arm. It's the Mona Lisa.
Nobody notices until the next day, when a painter arrives to copy her and finds four iron pegs on an empty wall.
The thief
The thief was Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman who had worked at the Louvre, and even helped fit some of its paintings with protective glass. He knew the building, the staff and the routines. He hid the painting in his Paris room for more than two years.
Meanwhile, the investigation went everywhere. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire was briefly arrested, and the young Pablo Picasso was questioned, because of a separate scandal involving statuettes stolen from the museum. Both were cleared.
The empty wall
Then something extraordinary happened. Crowds came to the Louvre to stare at the empty space where the painting had hung. Newspapers around the world printed her face. The Mona Lisa had been admired before, but now she became the most famous painting on Earth.
In December 1913, Peruggia tried to sell her to an art dealer in Florence, claiming he wanted to return her to Italy. The dealer called the museum director, and the Mona Lisa was recovered. She returned to the Louvre in early 1914.
What the story teaches about looking
There's a strange lesson in this heist: sometimes we only truly notice something when it's gone. Thousands of people walked past the Mona Lisa every year. It took her absence to make the world look.
Try it with something in your own life: a painting on your wall, a view from your window, the face of someone you see every day. Look at it as if it might disappear tomorrow.
Step outside, like the thief
Peruggia walked out of the Louvre into the streets around the Tuileries. You can walk out more slowly. My Tuileries prints are a deconstructed view of the garden next to the museum in spring, crisp air, blooms and bright blue sky. Each print is hand-finished, signed, and comes with a meditation letter. A view worth noticing every day, before it's gone.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi