Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of the Mona Lisa

Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of the Mona Lisa
By R. A. Scotti Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. 241 pages. Nonfiction.

On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre. The theft was not discovered until two days after she went missing and, as one might imagine, heads rolled. R. A. Scotti tells the story of the robbery and the return with the greatest wit, charm, and irony. Although the greatest criminologists of the time put their minds and talents to tracing the thieves, the picture remained missing for two years. In the meantime, the Mona Lisa's stock rose, with long lines of art-lovers waiting for a chance to see where the picture used to hang. Along the way, who knew that the police would arrest Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire as suspects? or that the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows because of a bad varnish job? Vanished Smile is a vastly entertaining text that reads like the finest of puzzle mysteries because it was the finest of puzzle mysteries, with a happy ending.

LW