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| Duchamp, L.H.O.O.C.Q, 1919 |
On
21st August 1991, Vicenzo Peruggia, along with the Lancellotti brothers, took
La Gioconda away from the Louvre with no trouble. (As you can read in our last week's post)
During the trial, he claimed it had been a patriotic act, even though
it was evident they were looking for money. In any case, it wasn’t plausible
that Vicenzo Peruggia had planned the robbery. So, who was behind this crime?
In the beginning, Apollinaire and Picasso were involved in it: they’d always
preach about how classic art should be killed so new arts would get more
protagonism. But facts later prooved their innocence.[1]
On 25th June 1932, an article was released in Saturday Evening Post about the crime and the confession of a
supposed planner, the marquis Eduardo de Valfierno. It was written by Karl
Decker, a journalist used to chasing the news and making it up if he wouldn’t
find any. Valfierno’s family was originarily a well-off one in Argentina, and
he was a white collar fraudster. But that’s not really his name and he actually
wasn’t a marquis, nobody really knew what his real name was. According to
Decker, they met in a café in Casablanca in 1914, and after Decker promised
he’d publish it after his death, the marquis, boasting about his perfect crime,
started telling his version of the story.
Valfierno had a partner, Yves Chaudron, an outstanding forger. After
getting bored of enriching themselves selling fake Murillo for the fun (not for
lack of money: Valfierno had gathered 1 million dollars in gold ingots), they
set up a plan: they’d copy La Gioconda 6 times and sell them to American
millionaires as unique and authentic copies. To buy it, they must not talk
about owning this painting, so it’d be guaranteed that they wouldn’t talk to
each other about this and find out about the fraud. To make this more
realistic, the real masterpiece should disappear from the Louvre. That’s why
the original wasn’t important. Chaudron spent hours copying it in the museum.
It was forbidden, though, to copy it in its original proportion and sizes, but
Chaudron uses his copy as model for the rest. Valfierno collected furniture
from XVI century to use the board as support, that way the copies would pass
any ageing analysis. Chaudron painted the copies as any Renassaince genius
would. While they were getting dry, Valfierno would cross the ocean and keep
them safe in a bank in New York, but he wouldn’t take several copies at once.
At the customs, he would claim it was a Mona Lisa and nobody would suspect
anything since imitiations were kind of a trend back then.
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| The Louvre without La Gioconda (Wikipedia) |
To steal the original, he contacts with Peruggia, who knew the musem
from inside and had built the crystal case that protected the painting. On 20th
August 1911, they visit the museum together and the guard had fallen asleep. They
spend the night hidden in a storage room where the painters kept their
material. The following day they dressed as part of the museum staff using
white coats. There they take its crystal and its frame away. Peruggia hid the
painting under his white coat, but he finds out the door way out was closed and
he tries to open it with a screwdriver. That’s when the plumber Sauve shows up
and solves the problem. Then they could get away with it, since there was
nobody keeping an eye on the door.
In the end, they got 90 million dollars, according to Decker, from 5
American and Brazilian millionaires. The partners then shared the money out.
The original Mona Lisa was hung on one of Peruggia’s room’s walls in Paris. But he didn’t understand
that it wasn’t for sale since that’d take them to prision.
But, who was Valfierno? Where are those 6 copies? Is the Louvre’s
Gioconda a copy or the original? Decker’s version has too many unexplained
flaws but it’s all we know about the story. Might it be, after all, a made up
story?
After all
these years, this crime still remains unclarified. Karl Decker died without
descendants and he didn’t leave any note about this. Valfierno died in Los Angeles
with a great fortune. Peruggia served as a solder for the World War I and then
lived in France as carpenter. He died when he was 44 years old due to lead
poisoning. Chaudron moved to the French countryside and kept forging as a
hobby, he died few years before the article was released.
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| Sapeck, La Gioconda smoking pipe, 1883 |
And
added to Duchamp’s, Warhol’s and so many other’s contributions, this is another
reason why the sought-after lady turned into a myth.
Sources: Scott, R.A. El robo de la sonrisa. Madrid, Turner, 2010;
Pulitzer, H. Where is the Mona Lisa? Londres, Pulitzer Press, 1967;
Caparrós, M. Valfierno. Buenos Aires, Planeta, 2005 (novel)
[1] Actually,
they were involved in another crime called ‘The Affair of the Statuettes’, that
was discovered due to La Gioconda’s robbery, for which they weren’t guilty.
I’ll tell you about this other crime some day…
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