Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [124]
As soon as he left, Geri and Poggi notified the authorities. Not long after Leonard returned to his hotel room, he answered a knock at the door and found two policemen there to arrest him. He was, they said, quite astonished.
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As word spread that the Mona Lisa had been found, the first reaction was disbelief. Upon hearing the news, Corrado Ricci, the director of Italy’s Department of Fine Arts in Rome, immediately left for Florence so that he could conduct his own tests on the painting. Other art experts converged on the Uffizi, eager to see the work. Of course, just to be present at the examination was a mark of one’s importance, so Poggi had more requests than he could handle.
When a reporter telephoned a curator of the Louvre to tell him the news, the Frenchman was at dinner and flatly refused to believe it. He said it was impossible and hung up. The museum itself issued a cautious statement: “The curators of the Louvre… wish to say nothing until they have seen the painting. Certain descriptions of details and features give rise to some doubts among them.” 13
Ricci, however, confirmed Poggi’s previous judgment that the painting was authentic, and the Italian government made an official announcement to that effect. The French ambassador in Rome made personal calls on the premier and foreign minister of Italy to offer his government’s gratitude. It was at the time presumed, but not of course absolutely certain, that the painting would be returned to the Louvre.
When the news reached the Italian Parliament, it interrupted a fistfight on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies. The minister of public education brandished a telegram about the return of the Mona Lisa, and the battling deputies surrounded him, clamoring for details. When he reported that the thief had taken the painting under the impression that he was recovering one of the treasures stolen from Italy by Napoleon, some of the deputies nodded. Even those who knew Leonardo himself had taken the painting to France believed that the French armies had seized other works of art during the Napoleonic Wars, for which no reparations had been paid. It seemed only fair that Italy should now keep the painting done by one of its most illustrious sons.
Cooler heads prevailed, and the minister announced later, “The ‘Mona Lisa’ will be delivered to the French Ambassador with a solemnity worthy of Leonardo da Vinci and a spirit of happiness worthy of Mona Lisa’s smile. Although the masterpiece is dear to all Italians as one of the best productions of the genius of their race, we will willingly return it to its foster country… as a pledge of friendship and brotherhood between the two great Latin nations.” 14 The thought that the two countries were united in their common heritage was significant, for Italy was formally an ally of (non-Latin-speaking) Germany, France’s perennial enemy. In 1915, after the outbreak of World War I, Italy joined the fighting on the side of France, in part owing to the fraternal feelings engendered by the Mona Lisa affair.
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Meanwhile, the man who called himself Leonard was being intensively questioned by the police. He talked freely, for he was still under the impression that he would be acclaimed by Italians when they found out his motive for the theft. He admitted that his real name was Vincenzo Perugia 15 and that he had been born in 1881 in the village of Dumenza, near Lake Como. Having left there as a young man because there were not enough jobs available, he went to France, where he found work as a housepainter and carpenter. (“Pittore,” he responded when asked for his occupation — using the word for artist, not merely housepainter.) Yes, he had worked at the Louvre — had, in fact, been one of those who had made the