Vanished Smile

The astonishing story of the still unsolved mystery of Mona Lisa's disappearance in 1911 told with dramatic freshness and imagination. On August 21, 1911, the unfathomable happened-- Mona Lisa vanished from the Louvre. More than twenty-four hours passed before museum officials realized she was gone. The prime suspects in the case were as shocking as the crime--the young avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire and his friend Pablo Picasso. R. A. Scotti's riveting, ingeniously realized account of the theft and its aftermath (the painting would not be recovered for more than two years) is itself a masterful portrait of a world in transition, transforming itself into the modern while enjoying a last carefree fling before the onset of war. As French detectives using new methods of criminology, including fingerprinting, tried to trace the thief, a burgeoning international media spread news of the theft around the world. In Paris, thousands flocked to the Louvre to see the empty space where the painting had hung. Some brought flowers and love letters and mourned as if for an actual death. Others spun theories about the disappearance. Mona Lisa's loss only compounded her mystery. In Scotti's deft hands, the tale of this great art heist becomes a story of the painting's transformation into perhaps the most familiar and lasting icon of all time.