The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity In the sweltering summer of 1911, a desperate guard burst into the office of the director of the Louvre in Paris, frantically shouting, "La Joconde c'est partie!" The Mona Lisa had vanished, leaving behind a trail of mystery and intrigue that would captivate the world for decades to come. Who could have pulled off such a brazen heist? Was it an international gang of thieves? An art-hungry American millionaire? Or perhaps the young Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was about to remake the very art of painting? Travel back to an extraordinary period of revolutionary turn-of-the-century Paris, where the streets were alive with the sounds of artists, writers, and intellectuals vying for attention. Meet the infamous thieves and detectives of the era, each with their own secrets and motivations. And then slip back further in time to follow Leonardo da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa, through his dazzling, wondrously weird life.

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