The painting's novel qualities include the subject's expression, which is frequently described as enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism. It was Jacques Jaujard, director of France's National Museums, who thwarted Hitler's scheme, pulled the wool over the eyes of the collaborationist tools of the Vichy government, and kept the Louvre's contents, including the Mona Lisa, safe for the duration of the war. The most famous theft of works of art in history, when the most famous painting in the world was stolen – Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, took place on August 21, 1911.

Among the many enduring mysteries of this period is the fate of the world’s most famous painting. Their dedication in tracking down and repatriating millions of great works from Europe's museums and private collections that had been stolen by the Nazis ensured that many treasures of Western art found their way home at the end of the war, instead of rotting in salt mines and warehouses. This is the only way to explain how the "Mona Lisa" – restitution number MNR 265, which now hangs in the Louvre's administrative offices – did return from Altaussee.
First published on Tue 12 Nov 2013 12.15 GMT.
During the investigation, both the head of the Louvre museum and the head of the Paris police were dismissed from their jobs, the CNN Edition: International reports. This article was adapted from Charney's book The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World's Most Famous Painting. This report states that the team "saved such priceless objects as the Louvre's Mona Lisa". Unbeknownst to them, the Mona Lisa was in the apartment, stashed in a trunk. The Mona Lisa was actually stolen in 1911, in one of the cleverest art heists ever pulled.

But the one that returned to the Louvre is far more likely to be real thing, and the one in Altaussee a high-quality copy. He found himself trapped inside the museum, carrying the world’s most famous painting with him.

The painting only “seems” to have been found there because contradictory information has come down through history, and the Mona Lisa is not mentioned in any wartime document, Nazi or allied, as having been in the mine. The Mona Lisa was actually stolen in 1911, in one of the cleverest art heists ever pulled. Mona Lisa and friends were moved again, this time even further south to the Musée Ingres in Montauban, 35 miles north of Toulouse. However, there is no record of the painting actually being part of the stolen art collected and stored by the Nazi. Another document, dated December 12, 1945, reads “the Mona Lisa from Paris [is included in] 80 wagons of art and cultural objects from across Europe”. Piecing together the facts, let's try to infer what really happened. This would explain why the "Mona Lisa" did return from Altaussee, but why it may also be that the "Mona Lisa" never left Paris.

In fact, from the very the day that it was stolen, it had languished in a one-room apartment on the outskirts of Paris. That day, he closed the Louvre for three days (ostensibly "for repairs") and his meticulous plan went into action. So, together with the Louvre's curator of paintings René Huyghe, Jaujard crafted a secret plan to evacuate almost all of the Louvre's art, which included 3600 paintings alone. On August 28, 1939, hundreds of trucks organized into convoys carried 1000 crates of ancient artifacts and 268 crates of paintings and more to the Loire Valley, where the splendid châteaux had room to host the art far from likely bombing targets. The only wartime documents available about the Mona Lisa say that on 27 August 1939 it was packed in a specially-marked crate, tailor-made in 1938, of double-thick poplar wood. We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests. Aside from modestly sized works like the Mona Lisa, the pieces they were rescuing included delicate artifacts such as the 4000-year-old Seated Scribe, monumental paintings such as Théodore Géricault's 16-by-24-foot The Raft of the Medusa, and massive statues such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace—which weighs 3 metric tons. Between the chaos of war and Jaujard's probable use of period copies of the Mona Lisa as decoys, there are conflicting reports about where exactly she went and how she made it back. This content is currently not available in your region. The box was crated up and the crate marked with three red dots, the only work in the entire collection with that rating. In November of 1939, the Mona Lisa was transported from Chambord to the château of Louvigny, the northernmost art depot where the large-format paintings were stored, to keep it out of reach of the advancing German army. Many people worked very hard for six years to keep the painting in France, and today there's little doubt that the Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre, encased by bullet-proof glass, is the one painted by Leonardo da Vinci 500 years ago.

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