Absence Creates Value
When They Lost The Mona Lisa.
“The Mona Lisa is famous not because of the man who painted it, but because of the man who stole it.”
In 1911, a Louvre employee named Vincenzo Peruggia walked out of the museum with the painting tucked under his arm. For two years, it was gone. Newspapers ran the story obsessively. People lined up to stare at the empty wall where it had hung. When it was finally recovered, the mystique was permanent. Leonardo da Vinci painted it, but Vincenzo Peruggia made it unforgettable.
