Mona Lisa is Missing
August 11, 1911 was a dramatic day for Paris. One of the most famous paintiin the world, the Mona Lisa, was stolen from Louvre Museum. The man who stole the painting was named Vincenzo Peruggia. This is a large crime and no one would ever think that Peruggia would be able to do something like this. He is a small, uneducated, working man. Joe Medeiros, the director and writer of this film is trying to figure out exactly how this happened. Joe travels across the country to meet Peruggia’s daughter, Cheltiza to get some unanswered questions. After talking with her, he quickly finds out that she never even knew her father. Peruggia died on October 8, 1945 which is his birthday as well and his body was buried in France. She was very young when he passed away and her mother remarried her dead husbands brother. They hid the fact that her father was a theft for 18 years and never told her about anything. She only knew small things about the theft that she had heard. She says that the reason her father did it was for patriotism from his country and wanted to get revenge on his co-workers that would make fun of him and call him “macaroni” because he was from Italy and that’s all she really knew about him.
Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa on August 11, 1911. He stole the painting in for two whole years. He got into the museum with his old work because they were cleaning the pictures glass. At the time he had a different job and dressed like one the cleaners to get in. The museum is closed on Mondays for cleaning so it was even easier for him to steal the painting. He not only chose the Mona Lisa because it is one of the most famous paintings in the world but because of how small it was and it would be easier to hide. He hid it in his apartment into a wooden box he made. He even left one of his friends Lancellati have the painting for 6 weeks! Peruggia had to have been a clever man at times, but he actually wasn’t. They later figured out why he stole...