Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [122]
Geri took the letter to the most knowledgeable art expert in Florence: Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery. (Within the Uffizi’s collection was a genuine Leonardo: The Adoration of the Magi.) Poggi thought following up on the offer was worth a try, but suggested Geri should demand that Leonard bring the painting to Florence, where Poggi could inspect it. Poggi had a document from the Louvre that detailed certain marks that were on the back of the original panel; no forger could be aware of these.
Geri did as Poggi suggested, but Leonard proved to be an elusive figure. More than once, he set a date for his arrival in Florence, and then sent a letter canceling the meeting. Geri assumed that he was a hoaxer after all, until on December 9 he received a telegram saying that Leonard was in Milan and would be in Florence on the following day.
That was inconvenient, for Poggi had gone on a trip to Bologna. Geri sent him an urgent telegram, using oblique language in case someone else should read it: “OUR PARTY COMING FROM MILAN WILL BE HERE WITH OBJECT TOMORROW. NEED YOU HERE. PLEASE RESPOND. GERI.”3 Poggi wired back that he could not arrive by the following day, but would be in Florence the day after that, a Thursday.
Geri prepared to stall. He was well aware that many people had claimed to have, or to know who had, the Mona Lisa, and that all these claims had been dead ends. But somehow he had a hunch that Leonard was different. Accordingly, when a thin young man wearing a suit and tie and sporting a handsome mustache arrived at the dealer’s gallery the next day, Geri showed him into his office and pulled down the blinds, emphasizing the secret nature of the conversation.
Eagerly — perhaps too much so — Geri asked where the painting was. Leonard replied that it was in the hotel where he was staying. Perhaps because he could not believe that someone would leave such a valuable object in a hotel room, Geri showed him a photographic reproduction of the Mona Lisa and asked if this was the painting.
Leonard nodded, with a quizzical look. Didn’t everyone know what the Mona Lisa looked like?
Geri pressed him further. The original, he asked. You have the original?
According to Geri’s account, Leonard replied, “I repeat: we are dealing with the real Gioconda. I have good reason to be sure.” 4 Leonard coolly declared that he was certain because he had taken the painting from the Louvre himself. He then gave an abbreviated account of the theft. Interestingly, some of his details were different from those known by the French police to be true. He said, for example, that he had entered the museum on Monday morning with other workers. If that were true, he would have been stopped, for everyone going in was checked against a list; moreover the police had found evidence that someone had stayed overnight in a storage closet from Sunday to the morning of the theft.
Geri was not aware of these discrepancies, but he was curious about one thing. Had Leonard been alone when he stole the painting? he asked. Leonard “was not too clear on that point. He seemed to say yes, but didn’t quite do so [but his answer was] more ‘yes’ than ‘no.’” 5
Eventually the discussion got down to the reward — though here the two men differed in their later accounts. Leonard claimed, “When I came to Florence and was in Geri’s presence, these were my exact words: ‘I want nothing; I set no price on the restitution I am making to Italy.…’ Then Geri said to me, ‘We’ll do things in such a way as to make us all content.’” 6
Geri, on the other hand, said that when he asked Leonard what kind of reward he had in mind, the thief boldly answered 500,000 lire. That was the equivalent of $100,000 and quite a fortune in those days, though of course the painting itself was valued far higher. Geri, holding his breath, thought that he had better agree, so he said, “That’s fine. That’s not too high.” 7 The important thing was to recover the painting, and he would promise