About 500 Words
When the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911, Pablo Picasso and his close friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, were arrested (Picasso said in court he had never met Apollinaire, an act he later said made him “ashamed”). They had nothing to do with the theft, however, and were let off.
The theft and the recovery kept the Mona Lisa in the news, making it the most famous painting in the world. When it went missing, people turned up at the Louvre to gaze at the empty space on the wall.
