57 pages • 1 hour read
Nicholas DayThe Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity
Nonfiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “The Mona Lisa Is Nowhere, the Mona Lisa Is Everywhere: In Which the Mona Lisa Refuses to Show Her Face and the New Science of Policing Goes on Trial” - Part 6: “The Consummate Professional: In Which the Louvre Reopens to Massive Crowds and the Police Go in Search of a Dead Man”
Part 4, Chapter 13 Summary: “A Few Very Sensible Theories”
Immediately following the theft, everyone had a theory about who stole the painting and why: Rogue employees, two German painters, the German government, the French government, the Louvre itself. Newspapers questioned fortune tellers and clairvoyants, who provided endless contradictory answers. From their clues, ships and trains were searched, but no Mona Lisa emerged. No one could escape Mona Lisa theories, not even two swimmers, who found a message in a bottle claiming the painting had been cast into the sea.
Part 4, Chapter 14 Summary: “The Louvre Is a Crime Scene”
Forensic science was a fairly new technology in 1911. Previously, the police were charged with maintaining order, not solving crimes. Now, thanks partly to Louis Lépine, the police were learning how to conduct police work. Lépine partnered with forensics science pioneer Alphonse Bertillon. Together, they made a “superhero duo of early criminology” (63), but they had flaws.
Now a crime scene, the Louvre remained closed and occupied by the police. The Mona Lisa’s theft “was a national embarrassment” (64). During the search, the theft itself became art. The investigation revealed that security was careless and unsystematic. Everything might be either suspicious or normal, but it was difficult to know which.
