Original subtitles

[Music]

my

[Music]

the mona lisa by leonardo da vinci is

the most famous painting in the world

but despite its legendary status few

were aware that it was once stolen from

the louvre and was considered lost for

two

years it was a sensational thing when it

happened many people have forgotten that

and not many people know about it

in 1911 an unknown intruder made his way

into the museum and left with one of

europe's greatest treasures the museum

opened the crowd started coming in

and people started noticing the empty

space on the wall

a frantic effort was made to recover

this priceless work of art

but the police had few leads to go on

newspapers around the world ran theories

of who was behind the theft from wealthy

industrialists to enemy nations

at the time it was all over the place

and it was the biggest news story of its

day it wouldn't have been stolen if it

didn't have some remarkable status but

clearly that got worldwide coverage

front page of newspapers it really

catches people's imagination of having

something completely priceless in a very

normal kind of domestic situation

little did they know that it was hidden

in a small apartment in the city the

whole time

if people throughout the world but

particularly in a western civilization

were to say what was the most famous

painting they would say the monarch so

the theft of it is probably the most

easily recognizable theft

it's a very thomas crown affair thing

isn't it the thrill of the chase

the story of how the mona lisa was

eventually recovered is just one of the

many mysteries surrounding the painting

and in fact even though leonardo da

vinci has an unsurpassed reputation

many of his works surprisingly went

missing after he died and have had to

survive similarly precarious journeys

the search continues to this day to find

all of the lost works of the

quintessential renaissance man

[Applause]

the mona lisa has always been a painting

surrounded in mystery ever since the day

leonardo da vinci first painted it in

florence in around 1503 it's generated

quite the reputation

certainly it was a very very important

painting when he was alive and it was

very influential it was admired and

particularly

what caught people's imagination was the

technique that he used in order to turn

that face into something a little more

mysterious than the average painting

what leonardo is incredibly good at and

very innovative in in portraits is

suggesting the portrait is looking at

something what he's immensely interested

in is how the eyes communicate he called

the windows of the soul when leonardo

was painting it artists his

contemporaries all flocked to see it

because it was so new and so unique and

so different than anything and it prove

to be a real inspiration to them

especially someone like raphael who

modeled i know one of his paintings

after this with a similar look and also

had the same positioning as the mona

lisa

leonardo became so attached to the

painting himself that he was unable to

part with it during his lifetime

there's a lot of discussion why leonardo

never parted with the mona lisa during

his lifetime i don't think anyone has

any clear-cut

answers to that some people think that

he simply just didn't finish it

and that he took it with him because he

was a very slow

methodical worker plus he got distracted

by a lot of other things he was as usual

distracted by other commissions

took about probably four years or maybe

longer

and through distraction different

travels

he took it with him and never parted

from it

for over a century the mona lisa had

been one of the greatest treasures held

in the louvre in paris

but in 1911 it would vanish without

trace

in the early 1900s museums like the

louvre weren't so worried about things

like theft as they were about fire

that's one of the reasons why the

paintings were never bolted to the walls

they were always hung loosely so that

they could be removed in case of an

emergency

there was also a lot of vandalism that

was taking place people unhappy with

their lives unhappy with their economic

situation would protest by going into

the state-run louvre and

desecrate some of the paintings people

would actually stab paintings with

scissors and with knives

to protest

so the louvre decided that they needed

to take some action

so they wanted to put all the major

masterpieces behind glass

a lot of people were up in arms but the

louvre saw no other way to protect uh

these great works of art and vincenzo

perugia was one of the five men

sent to the louvre to uh to work on the

paintings who helped cut and clean the

glass

but vincenzo perugia had hatched a plan

to steal the mona lisa and on the 21st

of august 1911 he put his plan into

action

[Music]

vincenzo perugia was not what you'd call

a common criminal or one of the suave

sophisticated art thiefs that you see in

the films

he was

an immigrant workman he was born in a

town called dumenza italy and he would

emigrate every year to france and

specifically to paris to work

perugia was a painter decorator he was

the oldest son he had three brothers and

a sister and his parents

and uh you know work was hard to come by

in italy and he was the oldest who went

out and tried to provide for his family

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so

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this was not the first time that the

mona lisa had been taken out of the

louvre

none other the napoleon bonaparte had

once had the painting move from the

louvre into one of his bedrooms during

his reign as emperor

and it was this connection with napoleon

that spurred vincenzo perugia to action

vincenzo pruitt just seemed to have

thought napoleon looted it and he looted

lots of things from italy and indeed the

leonardo manuscripts and the institute

of france still in france

a napoleonic loot one day perugia was

waiting to uh to start the job and he

picked up a book that was lying around

in the work room and he saw

this great caravan of statues and

paintings that were being brought to

france

by napoleon's army it came to think that

all the italian artwork in the louvre

had been stolen by napoleon

he was thinking not that francis the

first had bought this years ago and

actually had a reasonable claim to it

but that it was stolen property and

he seems to have believed that perugia

really thought that

it was napoleon who had taken the

painting as he had stolen many other

paintings

so it was a patriotic act he was

returning the painting to its original

country he got the idea that he was

going to take a painting back to italy

and if he did well he'd be a hero and

then maybe the government would give him

some money and it was

his belief that

he was going to do the italian country a

favor

[Music]

vincenzo perruggia had stolen the mona

lisa on a monday morning

but it was not until tuesday that the

museum realized it was missing

when word got out it would cause a

sensation around the world

but especially on the streets of paris

with one of her greatest treasures now

vanished it was the talk of the town and

rumors spread like wildfire

on tuesday when the painting disappeared

and the police came searched the louvre

found the empty frame

they knew that something was wrong the

newspapers break the story of the mona

lisa being stolen

and this news rocks paris in fact it

goes all around the world this was when

newspapers

were probably at their peak literally

millions of copies of every newspaper

were printed

every day and this was front page news

story

[Music]

everyone loves the story of you know a

heist or an art theft it's incredibly

exciting i think everyone has that

feeling when you walk in to museum i

mean i remember being a child and kind

of wanting to wonder what would happen

if you pull the painting off the wall

you know it's everyone is fascinated by

it and i think even in 1911 you know

they would close all the ports there

were police everywhere

[Music]

so in the grand discussion of who the

suspects were a lot of people pointed

their fingers at wealthy americans

because at the time americans were very

much on the hunt for european artwork

and j.p morgan was probably at the top

of the list he was certainly if not the

wealthiest man in the world one of them

and he was spending a lot of that wealth

on bringing to america

the great treasures of europe

there were certain camps

that had their own theories about

exactly what was wrong the prefect of

paris police a man named louie lepin

very famous at the time in fact some

newspapers had called him the greatest

policemen in the world

his theory was that the painting was

taken by an agent of a foreign power who

was going to blackmail the louvre

for cash or for other political reasons

or he thought it was just a disgruntled

employee

with world war one just around the

corner it was no surprise that germany

was seen as a potential culprit for the

crime

there were other conspiracy theories

some people thought that the germans who

were the enemies of the french sent an

agent in to steal

france's greatest treasure in order to

provoke war everybody was trying to come

up with their own angle of where the

painting was

but only one man in the world knew

whether mona lisa was being held

vincenzo perugia

and while he kept the painting in his

paris apartment all sorts of people were

accused of the crime

the finger was even pointed at a young

artist just making a name for himself in

paris pablo picasso

he soon found himself in the firing line

[Music]

vincenzo perugia had successfully pulled

off the heist of the century thanks to

some weak security at the louvre and a

slice of good fortune

but perugia had been misinformed about

the mona lisa's history

his audacious plan may have been

successful but he was incorrect in his

belief that napoleon had once looted the

painting

its rightful home was not in italy but

in the louvre in paris where he had

taken it from

leonardo himself had spent the last

three years of his life in the

employment of king francis the first of

france

having started the mona lisa in around

1503 leonardo was never fully satisfied

with the painting and 13 years later

took it with him to the french royal

court

it is said that king francis joined

leonardo on his deathbed

but what is known for certain is that

the king purchased the mona lisa for

more than a princely sum and it was

placed in the palace of fontainebleau

during the french revolution it found

itself the property of the people of

france and was placed in the louvre

but that didn't stop napoleon from

claiming the painting for himself

the mona lisa did hang above napoleon's

bed for a while it was after that

returned to the louvre to what became

then the louvre of the people of france

when the monarchy was restored

however when the mona lisa was returned

to its rightful home it wasn't exactly

the center of attention as this painting

by samuel morse demonstrates

[Music]

vincenzo perugia was stuck with a

masterpiece in his apartment and no

plans for what to do with it

while he tried to lay low the rest of

paris remained captivated by the theft

of one of the city's greatest treasures

this was a front page news story and it

lasted not for for hours or days or

weeks but months and actually ultimately

two and a half years this was still in

the paper with people looking for the

mona lisa it wouldn't have been stolen

if it didn't have some remarkable status

but clearly

that got worldwide coverage for the

photographs of people queuing to see the

gap

people queued up to look at the empty

wall in the louvre and look at the pegs

that were up on the wall so it became

much more famous at the time you know

even kafka went to go and have a look

at the wall so it definitely was almost

kind of a tourist attraction as the

empty space of the mona lisa and i'm

sure that did you know up the profile i

mean at the end of the day it's da vinci

then eventually the parisians in their

way started making jokes there were

there was a series of funny postcards

put out saying uh where is the mona lisa

today and on one she's in london playing

the guitar in front of big ben and

another she's shopping in downtown paris

her image started appearing on

cookie boxes tobacco tins the mona lisa

became a commodity because of the fame

and a lot of people say that it is the

fame of the theft that made the mona

lisa as well known as she is today

the police tried desperately to catch

the culprit and one of those accused of

the crime was pablo picasso who had

recently made a name for himself in the

art world

both he and his close friend guillermo

polinaire fell under suspicion

especially since a pollinator had once

claimed that the louvre should be burnt

to the ground

a pioneer's real name is guillaume

kostrovitskiy he was po of polish

descent but he lived in paris he made

his name in paris he was very well known

pablo picasso was just starting to make

a name for himself

in the art world he was an artist that

had really embraced life in paris and

that had been

really formative in

in the beginnings of his fame which he

was obviously already getting there you

know he had done der moiser it had been

an absolute outrage but he was becoming

pretty famous guy by that point pauliner

and picasso were accused of the theft of

the mona lisa partly because picasso had

been found

in the possession of some statuettes

siberian statuettes that had been stolen

from the louvre i didn't know he still

had them

[Music]

the finger was pointed because he did

already own

in inverted combos pieces of work which

were taken from the louvre so it was an

obvious implication of picasso

hello

[Music]

what are you doing

your friend is a liar

the police wanted to know how picasso

had these uh stolen statues in the

louvre in his possession well picasso

had bought them but he didn't know that

they were stolen

he is jealous

i never bought the statues

i've never seen the statues

he bought them from this man who sold

them for just a few pounds now the man

happened to be an assistant of a pioneer

we'll throw them in the river pablo no

one will know they were here just just

calm down this is your fault you

introduced us

they'll have me deported for this don't

you

see picasso used these two iberian

statues as models as inspiration for one

of his famous paintings at the time les

demos el davignon

so picasso had used this as inspiration

in fact he still had these statues in a

closet in his apartment so when the news

broke picasso started to be a little

worried about this

this is ridiculous

just give me a moment

we should just get rid of them now

we'd be seen

pablo we we just have to wait

i'll be dark soon

come on

you're winning

i don't see why we're playing this

stupid game

picasso and the pauliner were so spooked

that a pollinator went to the newspaper

and confessed he was arrested

picasso was brought in for questioning

he was held not charged and released

uh pioneer sat in jail for eight days

police thought that there was an

international gang of art thieves behind

the theft of the mona lisa he was

ultimately released because there was no

proof apollinais had declared that in

his quest for modernity the louvre

should be burned so i suppose the two

things

joined in particularly the theft of the

statuettes but they were

released very very soon it wasn't his

home it wasn't his culture or country so

to be seen as kind of stealing

pieces of work which belonged to the

nation

it wasn't ideal

pioneer was so damaged by the fact that

his loyalty to france

was called into question

that he

volunteered to fight in the war and he

became injured through shrapnel and

eventually died

so because of the theft of mona lisa and

the

scandalous uh accusation that a

pollinator had to live through the theft

of the mona lisa

you could say killed the pollinator

while picasso and apollonia fell under

suspicion the real culprit vincenzo

perugia had become restless and made an

attempt to sell the painting on he

contacted alfredo jerry an art dealer in

florence claiming he wanted to return

the mona lisa to italy

alfredo jerry was an art dealer in

florence italy

he was a well-known dealer at the time

owning an art auction house it placed

ads

in a lot of newspapers saying he was

looking for antiques to buy

one of the ads he placed was in an

italian paper that perugia read in paris

he wrote him a letter he said senior

jetty i have the mona lisa and it is my

fond wish to bring it to italy where i

hope it will remain in the uffizi

gallery forever

[Music]

he chose to sign his letter with the

name

leonardo

so jetty gets this letter and he looks

at it going all right this is a joke

this is crazy i'm going to throw this

throw this away but then he has second

thoughts

came this morning

so what jetty does is go see

giovanni poggi poggie is the director

of the ufc gallery florence's biggest

museum

if

perugia wants to return the mona lisa to

the uffizi

he's got to have the permission of pudgy

the copy i would imagine

right back

[Music]

inform him you wish to examine the

painting before buying

let's bring leonardo back to florence

the mona lisa was finally close to being

recovered

perugia would take the painting on a

train from paris to meet alfredo jerry

and giovanni poggi looking for a

handsome reward for the return of the

mona lisa

vincenzo perugia had stolen the mona

lisa in august 1911

leaving the paris police baffled

he had kept the painting hidden in his

apartment for two years

unsure of his next move

during this time accusations were thrown

around the city and people began to lose

hope of a recovery

but in 1913 perugia finally decided to

act when he attempted to sell the

painting in florence he had arranged to

meet with an art dealer called alfredo

jerry

both he and the director of the uffizi

gallery giovanni poggi

didn't know what to expect

[Music]

come in

see no jerry

leonardo

yes

you have the object

she's safe

don't worry

can we see it

they all walk over to the hotel

they climbed the stairs to perugia's

room

they're both looking at each other jerry

and pogie going what have we gotten into

you know this guy's staying in this

fleabag hotel

he doesn't look like anybody who could

pull off this crime

but we're here

they go into the room and he he opens

the trunk

he starts taking all this junk out of

the trunk his mandolin old shoes his

paintbrushes old clothes he removes the

false bottom and under there is an

object wrapped in red cloth

that

pongi's thinking this is the real

painting

so he calmly tells perugia well i've got

to do more tests on this you know i've

got to

inspect this a little closer at the

uffizi can we take it back to the museum

and

perugia says yes

so they go back to the uffizi

and poggie brings out some big

photographs that he has of the mona lisa

i simply did what any patriotic italian

would have done

i bought a home

you do expect to be paid though i assume

if the government were to reward my duty

with some

small gift it would be wrong with me to

refuse

[Music]

i want 500 000 lira

it's a 400 year old painting at this

time and the varnish on the painting has

been cracked

over the years sure you can forge

the mona lisa but there's no way you're

going to replicate each one of those

thousands and thousands of cracks

if it's real

it's real

there are marks on this no ford you

could know

[Music]

it's real

[Music]

so apogee is comparing the photograph

with the actual mona lisa anything

that's legitimate and they tell perugi

to go back to his hotel that they'll be

in touch

[Music]

satisfied they had the real thing jerry

and podgy contacted the police

[Music]

and vincenzo perugia was arrested for

the art theft of the century

the news of the recovery of the mona

lisa breaks worldwide the news of its

recovery is even bigger than the news of

its theft

his apartment in paris where he hid the

painting for so long was extensively

searched by the police

amazingly perugia only served a few

months in jail and became a hero to many

in italy for his actions

i've looked at the testimony in court

and so and i think he's a pretty

dysfunctional guy you wouldn't say that

he was somebody who pursued things in

very logical sequences and i think

yeah probably the initial motion he

always claimed that he thought napoleon

had looted it from italy

i think perugia came out with this

nonsense about napoleon at some point

not realizing that there wasn't had been

a king in france called francis the

first

so happened the king had asked leonardo

for a thing

and bought boarded from him i think

people love to get behind their own you

know davinci is obviously one of the

most iconic artists that there is in

italy and you know to be taken by

italian and returns or you know be in

the hands of an italian seizing it for

to return it to its natural home i think

is probably a kind of quite a romantic

idea that people liked you know they got

behind and

and kind of took interest in the story

pooja was celebrated somewhat in

florence people sent money to perugia in

jail they sent gifts to him people

offered to to pay his bail so in some

ways uh you know he was a hero that way

but eventually all that wore off he was

arrested in december 1913 he was put on

trial in june 1914 they were perilously

close to the first world war people had

other things in mind other than the

trial of the man who stole the mona lisa

the simple truth is that

idiotic trophy art heists

get you nowhere if you're the criminal

and they're a pain in the backside to

law enforcement authorities because they

just go on and on and on they cost money

it's worse for them for the criminals

themselves they have no clue what to do

before the mona lisa was returned to the

louvre it was sent on a tour of italy

since then its only other foreign visits

have been to moscow tokyo and the us

where it was presented by president

kennedy

one of washington's most distinguished

throngs is at the national gallery of

art to welcome a distinguished visitor

president and mrs kennedy with french

cultural minister andre mulrow and his

wife pay homage to the first public

appearance of mona lisa the leonardo da

vinci painting that has captured the

fancy of generations for 400 years

when it went to new york it had a kind

of royal reception with

j.f kennedy and jacqueline kennedy mr

minister we in the united states

are grateful for this loan

from the leading artistic power in the

world france

the mona lisa has only been out of

france three times moscow and tokyo

[Applause]

in 1963 when the french government

loaned her to the united states where

she was displayed in new york and in

washington

and in 1913 when vincenzo perugia took

her to italy it was allowed out for a

short time but um it's been in the

louvre

securely for a long time and it's only

allowed out once a year when it's

checked out for its

condition

and rest assured security now is a lot

tighter than it was back in 1911.

she hasn't been out that much and one of

those times was was by the man who stole

her you can't justify it you can't say

that it was ever a good thing but

the outcome of it were good things

museums new now

if a painting is removed from the wall

put a little tag on the wall that says

that the the painting is somewhere else

security was bolstered it really opened

up a whole new world of of what a

painting like the mona lisa could do

there are lots of stories about

stealing art and famous pieces of art it

seems impossible that one should do it

because they're so well known another

painting by leonardo that was stolen the

madonna of the yarn wind that was stolen

from the duke of a clues collection in

scotland

the madonna of the yarn winder was taken

in a daring heist in 2003

the painting was hanging in drum landrig

castle when a gang of four men took it

at knife point in broad daylight the

police contacted me and said let's talk

about the picture and what do we do if

we recover it how do we tell it's

leonardo i was able to tell the police

i've got good forensic evidence which

are not available to the thief so if

they attempted to to replicate the

painting and give you back the replica

then i can tell you and they rather like

that

as the months turned into years it was

feared to have been lost to the criminal

underworld

the duke asked me my advice about what

he really ought to do to get the picture

back to protect his collection i

explained my reasons to him and so he

thanked me for my advice

the strathclyde police were trying to

covert operation to recover the painting

the important thing is to get the

picture back

and they got it back

the painting was recovered in 2007 from

thieves who were trying to use it as

collateral as part of other illegal

operations

i got a call from the police saying um

there's been developments can you help

us

and

after a bit i went up to edinburgh and

um the picture was then in the

conservation studios of the national

galleries of scotland being examined

and you could walk into the room and i

could say oh yeah that's the original

but we could reconstruct evidence of the

underdrawing so

again it helped the police to have

something which wasn't just an art

historian coming in and saying yeah

that's obviously leonardo

there was really hard evidence that this

was the real thing

but why do people steal famous works of

art that they could never sell on we

know that

there are reasons for stealing works of

art that are to do with um using them as

collaterals for drug purposes or for

money laundering or for criminal

purposes so it's less to do with a

wealthy individual keeping the painting

for themselves

some sort of obsession with the work of

art and it's probably more to do with

big criminal acts except for the case of

peru of course

the story of vincenzo perugia's theft is

only one of the mysterious events

surrounding the mona lisa and all of

leonardo's works it's been a battle to

try and hunt down the very few paintings

he worked on in his life many of which

went missing over the centuries

in fact in just the last few years two

previously unknown works were unveiled

that many claim are by leonardo's hand

[Music]

the mona lisa was lost for a period of

two years before it was gratefully

recovered in 1913

but many other of leonardo's paintings

have gone missing for a lot longer than

that

in fact in just the last few years two

previously unknown works were unveiled

based at oxford university professor

martin kemp the leading international

authority on the renaissance genius led

the team that authenticated the first

work of art by leonardo to appear for

over a century

la bella principessa

i get some new leonardo's more regularly

than i care to confess and most of them

are pretty absurd

you get some things which are

promising that you know you think well

at school of leonardo or maybe buy a

pupil this came through is a quite

decent quality digital file and i

thought that's it's almost too good to

be true

you know it's very pretty very

beautifully executed but you always say

don't believe it you go in or you should

go in with enormous amount of skepticism

with leonardo it's very difficult

because he tackled almost every project

as a one-off it seems every painting

every project he did he thought it

through if not from the ground upwards

he certainly thought about new ways of

doing it new media and so on

there was an added layer of intrigue

with this drawing as it was on vellum a

medium that is not part of any other

known work by leonardo

the fact it was on vellum cuts both ways

we know that leonardo is very

experimental in his media and it's very

difficult to say he did not use vellum

um but equally the fact you know if you

were doing something which you're

pretending to be leonardo a deliberate

deception you wouldn't choose that

medium which makes life difficult for

you but i did know that leonardo

discussed working on vellum so it wasn't

a total surprise

only a handful of paintings are

universally accepted to be by leonardo

da vinci's hand

scholars argue over the attribution of

many of the paintings and la bella

principessa is no different if we look

at leonardo's work only the last sapper

has a continuous history which is a

surprise you think the mona lisa has and

so on that they all have breaks in their

provenance i think their history of who

owned them

so each one comes out in a somewhat

different way

amazingly right after la bella

principessa was found yet another work

has been attributed to leonardo the

salvator mundi

after its attribution it sold for over

70 million dollars

we had drawings of the salvador mundi by

leonardo we had masses of copies and the

picture being completely over painted

um it's painted on walnut panel which

had warped over time it tented i the

grain pushed up and somebody simply took

a plane or some shaving device and they

shaved off the ridges

so it's very badly damaged somebody

completely over painted it um looking

back now on the black and white

photographs you can see areas which say

this is worth looking at but overall i

described as looking at her drug crazed

hippie

and it yeah simply an unattractive thing

once all the overpaint was stripped off

you could see that you've got a kind of

archaeological version of

a leonardo and it absolutely shouts

leonardo

it's been restored that's to say the

missing areas have been diplomatically

filled in

just like the salvator mundi other works

by leonardo that have had to find their

way back into his cannon include the

lady with an ermine

the benoit madonna

and the geneva de benshi

but there may be yet another hiding

behind a wall in florence

the battle of anguiari

i've always been fascinated with

leonardo mostly because of not only his

great successes but his great failures

and one of his great failures is the the

battle of angiari this this massive

mural of one of the battles in italian

or florentine history

that he had painted

but because he used a new technique

the paint wasn't adhering to the walls

he was notorious for trying out

different techniques and so the fresco

painting

requires a specific

keying into the actual

fresh

plaster leonardo tried to

to to dry the paint by putting uh

these these large urns with fire at the

base

of the the great mural to dry the paint

but instead of drying it it caused all

the paint to run that technique was uh

was an uphazard technique i mean he he

was experimental that's really what he

was doing he was a scientist as well as

an artist

we still have the preparatory studies

that leonardo da vinci made for the

battle of angiari as well as a copy made

by peter paul rubens in 1603 but the

original

remains elusive

some people think that it's still being

preserved and thinks behind another

painting in the palazzo vecchio painting

done by vasari

the battle of angie our research has

been going on since

the late 1970s in one form or another

and at one point a bit of plaster was

removed from a wall and disclosed

nothing maurizio saracino's search has

got entangled in

florentine politics

and florentine politics are in the art

world are hideously complicated well the

battle of angery was definitely painted

on the walls of the palazzo vecchio so

we have documentation for that in fact

we know that leonardo started each year

he started the mona lisa in 1503

but um unlikely that it will be found

there are clues in vasari's painting

that behind this there's leonardo's

masterpiece

he says i think in one of the flags in

the painting it says seek and ye shall

find

so

this italian art historian you know had

been drilling holes in in uh in

obtrusive places in the visari to put

cameras in and he's seen

things behind there that they he thinks

are uh paint from the time of leonardo

if it is in a space between these two

walls that this wall in which leonardo

painted and there's the wall on which

vasari painted i'm not convinced there's

there's really much of a gap between

them

various searches to find the painting

under the

wall have really not led to any results

yet so i think it's unlikely even though

quite a lot of people are interested in

searching for it i hope they find the

battle of hungary it would be

just incredible it'd be the largest

leonardo ever found

the struggle continues to see if the

battle of angiari has survived

and while that painting may not have

been recovered people continue to claim

that new works by leonardo have been

found

there has even been a claim that an

earlier version of the mona lisa was

unearthed

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there was a huge trumpeted announcement

of the discovery of the first version of

the mona lisa not very pretty on canvas

and it was owned by somebody who lived

in isil worth so it's known as the

iselworth mona lisa which

i don't want to be rude about isilworth

but it's not the most probable place to

fight

to find the mona lisa

and it was accompanied by this big book

with

gold edged very fat with masses of

so-called evidence i see quite a lot of

leonardo attributions which come with

fat folios of staff and it's almost as

if you accumulate enough pages you have

enough scientific analysis enough graphs

enough pigment analysis and so on that

somehow proves something

i think you can demonstrate fairly

clearly it belongs to one of a small

family of copies i'd be interested in

finding out more about it but

not under the coercions it has to be an

early version of the of the mona lisa

in 2012 another mona lisa story broke

when a copy of the painting was

discovered at the prado museum in spain

it was displayed at the louvre and is

thought to be by one of leonardo's

pupils and therefore the earliest known

copy of the original painting

leonardo da vinci had many admirers

during his lifetime and his masterpieces

were extensively copied by his pupils

the leonardeschi

these copies are still being unearthed

but could any more lost works by the

master himself ever turn up

as far as other discoveries go of

completely new material you can't rule

that out it's not

very usual that they're found it's quite

slow finding leonardo even though there

are lots of people who maintain all the

time that they're around

it's wonderful that in recent times

we've uncovered these these new

leonardo's he didn't do that much work

and to find new things is is remarkable

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the last painting before the salvatore

mundi to be discovered was early 20th

century that's the denmark madonna and

some petersburg and hermitage in russia

i'm working on an international edition

of the leonardo manuscript owned by bill

gates remarkably

if you look at

the thousands of existing pages really

hard you still discover new things

but while more works by leonardo da

vinci may eventually be found someday

no recovery could be quite as remarkable

as the story of vincenzo perugia and the

theft of the mona lisa

the painting continues to cast its spell

over the world

this is a famous painting it's a mystery

it's an icon it's it's one of the few

things on on earth that practically

everyone on earth knows and and for that

she's celebrated and and in demand i

think there probably is something in

that is incredibly enigmatic you know

there is that smile and there is

something quite almost entertaining

about stealing that painting because

that's part of the interest in it is the

mystery

the act of stealing the painting and the

fact that the painting was absent made

the painting obviously much more famous

the theft remains a very dramatic story

but it's one of many stories around

monalisa many legends many true stories

and so on she's still in the news

you know every couple of weeks they're

digging up the body of the person they

think is the mona lisa there's another

theory there was just something that

says the copy of the mona lisa that's in

the prado was done at the same time and

if you put them together it's a 3d image

this is 500 years later after she's been

painted and she's still getting press

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you