Mona Lisa by Kemp Martin;Pallanti Giuseppe; & Giuseppe Pallanti

Author:Kemp, Martin;Pallanti, Giuseppe; & Giuseppe Pallanti [Kemp, Martin & Pallanti, Giuseppe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2017-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

Peruggia was of course hoping to show himself in the best light, motivated by patriotism rather than financial greed. In effect he was killing two birds with one stone, repatriating Leonardo’s masterpiece, which he wrongly believed to have been Napoleonic plunder, and easing the poverty of himself and his family. He exaggerated the ease with which he exited the Louvre. He found the door at the bottom of the staircase firmly locked. He seems in desperation to have unscrewed the door knob, to no avail. Fortuitously a workman with keys arrived and opened the door. Peruggia looked like a legitimate employee.

All the accounts of Peruggia during the affair comment on his apparent lack of anxiety and even of engagement. He felt he was doing the right thing, and would be well recognized for his efforts, however much the immediate course of events seemed to be going against him. His real emotional involvement was with Gioconda herself. Not even in her relatively insalubrious birthplace could Lisa have countenanced the circumstances under which she was surviving in Peruggia’s squalid Parisian apartment, emerging regularly from her claustrophobic trunk to be feasted on by her captor’s loving eyes—as he himself recounted.

Peruggia contacted Geri in response to the dealer’s advertisement for items to display and sell at top prices in a prestigious exhibition of old masters that he was planning in 1913 for his Florentine gallery. Geri was a major international dealer and collector, resident in a fine villa in Settignano outside Florence.28 That Peruggia should make contact via this commercial route confirms the financial dimension to his escapade. He was no innocent abroad. He had convictions for attempted robbery and possession of a weapon.29

Geri’s court testimony confirms much of Peruggia’s account. After initial scepticism about the implausible letters he was receiving from a certain ‘Leonard’ in Paris, he encouraged their sender to come to Florence with the painting, and he contacted his friend, Giovanni Poggi, the relatively new director of the Uffizi, who was to play a vital role in the protection of Italy’s artistic treasures during the Second World War.

Geri tells how:

that Wednesday in the afternoon a young man, thin with a small black moustache, modestly dressed, appeared at my office and said that he was the possessor of the Gioconda and invited me to accompany him to his hotel to see the picture. He answered all my questions with much assurance and told me he wanted 500,000 lire for his picture. I said that I was prepared to pay this sum and invited him to return the next day at 3.00 p.m. At 3.00 the next day Poggi was at my house. At ten minutes past 3.00 the man had not arrived. Had the business fallen through? We became impatient. Finally at 3.15 Leonard arrived. I introduced Leonard to Poggi. They shook hands enthusiastically, Leonard saying how glad he was to be able to shake the hand of the man to whom was entrusted the artistic patrimony of Florence.

The three of us left together.

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