The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity

“This is a story about how a strange, small portrait became the most famous painting in history. It’s about the shocking theft and bizarre recovery. It’s a glimpse of a new age—a future of conspiracy theories and instant celebrity.”

While the first two chapters create vivid scenes, Chapter 1 in Renaissance Florence and Chapter 2 in Paris’s Louvre on the day the Mona Lisa was stolen, Chapter 3 announces the point of telling these stories. This interplay of description and exposition continues across the book. Nicholas Day includes scenes that read like fiction, interspersing them with age-appropriate commentary that guides readers’ interpretation of the events he describes, tying them to contemporary events, as here he references “conspiracy theories” and “instant celebrity.”

“To solve the theft of Leonardo’s painting, the world needed someone like Leonardo da Vinci himself: someone who observes.”

This is an early reference to the book’s theme of The Importance of Wonder and Curiosity. Day presents Leonardo as someone constantly open-minded and curious, which forms an important contrast to the assumption-driven approach of the theft investigators: If they had approached the investigation with open minds, they could have recovered the Mona Lisa within a few days.

“Lépine’s theory was that detectives should be inconspicuous, and police officers who walked the street should be conspicuous. It was an idea that was both sensible and utterly senseless.”

At the time of the investigation, Lépine was a well-respected and proven leader who had saved the French government when riots threatened to topple it. Across the narrative, Day highlights how this confidence in his own abilities ultimately became a liability. Lépine formed theories based on his opinions that may have sounded clever, as in the above example, but did not come from observation of conditions in the city.

“Over the next month, it was transformed into a painting that was beloved by all, that spoke to everyone, that moved everyone. In fact, it became less a painting and more an object of worship. It was myth, a mystery, almost a living being.”

Day is here describing the effect of daily newspaper coverage on public perception of the Mona Lisa, highlighting The Power of Narrative. Before being stolen, it was known among critics and artists, but it was not a painting that drew large crowds. The more the newspapers wrote about it, the more fascinated with it people became. The technology of news media intersected with the rise in literacy rates, and together, they made the Mona Lisa into a legend.

“For centuries, literacy had been a specialized skill. That was changing fast. More people were going to school; more jobs required reading. The result was a surge in literacy.

The side effect was the golden age of newspapers.”

This passage exemplifies the method through which the book explores a huge topic—The Impact of Historical Events—through very specific instances of it. Here, a series of events converge to transform the Mona Lisa into a phenomenon. The need for more literate workers encouraged more people to attend school, which caused literacy rates to increase dramatically. The net effect was that when the Mona Lisa was stolen, there was a reading public hungry for stories, and newspapers provided that.

“As an outsider, he learns to see the world more clearly, because he can’t afford the luxuries of assumptions or illusions. He has to see the world as it is.”

Day is here describing Leonardo, the circumstances he was born into, and their effect on him. Since his parents were not married, Leonardo could not, in Renaissance society, be his father’s heir. Day proposes that these unfair circumstances paradoxically enabled the development of his greatest skill: his ability to experience the world free of limiting assumptions. It is a point he returns to repeatedly, as he shows across the book the danger of overconfidence in individuals and cultures and The Importance of Wonder and Curiosity.

“But Leonardo da Vinci is an unusual young man. He’s not in a hurry to acquire a fortune. He’s not in a hurry to acquire power. He’s in a hurry to acquire knowledge—he wants to know everything that might be possible, and more than a few things that might not be.”

Leonardo could have leveraged his exceptional artistic skills to open his own successful studio, but he was driven by different goals: He sought knowledge and pursued whatever experiences would put him in a position to acquire it. He never felt that he had learned everything worth knowing. Day shows that Leonardo remained curious and eager for knowledge for as long as he lived, and this, as much as his painting, is what he remains known for.

“The loss of the Mona Lisa was a national embarrassment, and everyone in power was trying to get back to Paris—they’d all fled in the August heat. They were trying to save themselves and maybe the Mona Lisa too.”

The prestigious figures at the center of the investigation provide a foil for Leonardo. Whereas he was born disadvantaged by being the son of unmarried parents, the men running the investigation had every advantage. They were respected and powerful and had the full resources of the nation at their disposal. Nevertheless, they were just as concerned about the optics of the theft as they were about the Mona Lisa. While Leonardo sought to understand the world, those in power at the time of the theft sought to control it.

“When we can something art—whether it is a painting, or a video, or a urinal (an actual thing people called art)—we are saying, This is interesting. Look at this. The word art is a way of marking something as worthy of our attention.”

Day here defines art as something that commands attention. Implied in this is that art invites the observer to be curious, to think and wonder. As Day shows across the book, Leonardo lived his life as if the world and everything in it were pieces of art, worth noticing and wondering about. His life and work are foils for the idea of art as a thing in a glass box in a museum that becomes a mirror for viewers to see themselves.

“Any fool could solve a simple crime, the thinking went, but it would take a brilliant crime for a brilliant detective to truly show his worth.”

The above passage reflects the beliefs of Lépine and Bertillon and The Power of Narrative: Their expectations of who would steal great art shaped their theories about who stole the Mona Lisa, which results in the painting being missing for years when it could have been missing for days. Day makes this point repeatedly by showing how popular fiction and sensational stories shaped the way people thought.

“He never lives for posterity, and he has no idea that future generations will mourn not having more artwork from him.”

A point Day returns to repeatedly is that Leonardo frequently failed to finish his commissions. He kept a notebook that he filled with observations and questions, but few of his ideas ever came to fruition. This passage expresses a reason why: Leonardo lived to pursue knowledge, not accumulate power, money, reputation, and influence, differentiating him not only from others of his time but also from the powerful men Day describes in turn-of-the-century Paris.

“The invading King Charles VIII of France was foolish and reckless. He’s mostly known today for marrying a woman who was already married and for dying from hitting his head on a doorframe.

But we owe him.

Without him, Leonardo would likely have never left Milan. Without him, the Mona Lisa would have never existed.”

Day frequently emphasizes when decisions or events are improbable, unexpected, or simply foolish to stress The Impact of Historical Events. The French king’s invasion of Italy is an important example of this. His decision may have seemed “foolish and reckless,” and it created tremendous destruction and upheaval. It also created the conditions that led Leonardo to leave Milan. It seems improbable that two figures so distant of each other can have such a profound effect on history, but that, Day repeatedly shows, is how history works.

“The timing was just right. Newspapers could now print illustrations cheaply and well, and they all ran illustrated supplements on the theft. The Mona Lisa became the most prominent face in the world, staring out of every newsstand.”

Day traces the Mona Lisa’s meteoric rise to public attention as a confluence of events: The rise of literacy enabled the growth of newspapers, which benefited from the technology that enabled them to print illustrations. Cumulatively, each of these small steps created a big effect, transforming the Mona Lisa into a work of art that the public became curious about, reflecting Technology and the Commodification of Art.

“Unlike Leonardo, Bertillon and Lépine didn’t start with the world. They started with what they assumed the world to be. They confused that with the actual world.”

Bertillon and Lépine provide a crucial case study of a larger issue that Day explores in the book: How assumptions can shape reality and the dangers this poses. Day shows how beginning with assumptions and projecting out of them can never reveal the world, only create a false illusion of it.

“There will appear gigantic figures in human shape, but the nearer you get to them, the more their immense stature will diminish.”

This passage is a riddle from Leonardo’s notebook, which Day incorporates to contrast the painter’s deep understanding of reality with Bertillon and Lépine’s false one. The answer to the riddle is, “The shadow cast by a man at night with a lamp” (136).

“Unlike Louis Béroud, the Duvets wanted their clients to see their own reflections. Literally. Before showing a painting, the Duvets would apply a heavy coat of varnish to it. Their clients were vain; they were delighted to see themselves in a masterpiece. The varnish shone. The clientele glowed. The painting sold.”

This passage speaks to the way art became a way for men who acquired and hoarded wealth during the Gilded Age to portray themselves as sophisticated and worthy stewards of culture, reflecting Technology and the Commodification of Art. The Duvets understood this and capitalized on it, turning the art in their gallery into mirrors, figuratively and literally.

“But thanks to the senseless choices of both men, the Mona Lisa is now a glimmer on the horizon.”

Day repeatedly returns to the way improbable or inexplicable events can lead to extraordinary outcomes. Here, Day is referring to Francesco del Giocondo and King Charles of France. Both made improbable and inexplicable decisions, but they brought Leonardo and Lisa together to create a painting that would transfix the world. This motif of the improbable supports The Importance of Wonder and Curiosity. Some mysteries can be unraveled, but many can only be appreciated through their effects rather than theories about them.

“This is the irony of the Mona Lisa. It’s a painting that breaks all the rules—but it is of a woman who could break none.”

At this point in the narrative, Day is exploring “how [the Mona Lisa] came to be” (152). He reflects that many stories can be told about the painting, but its existence invites questions rather than answers. By highlighting a central irony about the painting, he continues to develop his motif of inexplicability.

“Perspective—making a flat surface appear to have depth—was the great achievement of Renaissance painting. It was the innovation that made possible all the paintings hanging in the Salon Carré. But Picasso didn’t want to paint from a perspective. He wanted to paint from every perspective: to paint each side of a person or a thing all at once.”

The Mona Lisa Vanishes explores the movement of history by examining a series of specific events that were later understood as defining moments. This passage highlights that phenomenon by focusing on Technology and the Commodification of Art. Oil painting had enabled Renaissance painters to create the illusion of depth on a canvas. Emerging technologies of the early 20th century—radio, train and air travel, newspapers, etc.—made people aware as never before of what was happening around the world. This in turn influenced Picasso, who sought to portray this awareness on canvas by incorporating multiple perspectives within a single painting.

“The masks Picasso saw—expressive, sharply featured, wholly new—were in fact recent works of art, and they were brilliantly innovative.”

The above excerpt describes the masks Picasso saw displayed at Paris’s Trocadéro museum. The masks came from Gabon, on Africa’s west coast, and were presented as “ageless, unchanging, primitive objects, evidence of an ageless, unchanging, primitive culture” (171). In reality, they were the exact opposite: They were new and innovative works of art that inspired Picasso’s revolutionary cubism. The masks exemplify how assumptions can create a story that has nothing to do with reality, invoking The Power of Narrative.

“The myth was more persuasive than the truth. It was a better story. People will choose the better story every time.”

Day does not reveal who stole the painting until near the end of the story. He does, however, foreshadow it by systematically exposing instances of assumptions leading to false conclusions and explaining the assumptions of the investigators. In this way, Day tells the story of how the Mona Lisa becomes a repository of people’s fantasies. Rather than mock or criticize the human desire for stories, Day emphasizes the importance of differentiating between the story and reality.

“The new technology of this new century—with all its wonder and promise—was now the machinery of death. Europe became a continent of ghosts.”

Day here addresses the decimation of human life wreaked by World War I, providing a tragically ironic twist to the promise of new technologies. The war effectively began with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria-Hungary, which occurred the day after Perugia was released. Day calls the discovery of the portrait “a final feel-good story for the world” before it changed (232).

“In conspiracy theory, belief matters more than facts. Belief in a conspiracy inevitably leads you away from the facts.”

Day underscores the “toxic way” belief can twist reality, noting “a lot of people found conspiracies more credible than evidence” (238) while discussing The Power of Narrative. The legions of theories and stories around the theft of Leonardo’s portrait exemplify this, with Day emphasizing the importance of maintaining a critical stance toward information.