Back on August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the walls of the Louvre by Vincenzo Perugia, an Italian craftsman who worked in the museum making frames for paintings he considered having been stolen from his homeland by French brigands.
A little over two years later, Perugia was arrested in Florence while attempting to sell the missing painting to an Italian museum. The Mona Lisa was restored to Paris; the Italian courts, tipping their hats to patriotism, sentenced Perugia to a year and 15 days in prison.
Now. During that 28-month period, a cottage industry grew up in Belgium…forging Mona Lisas for sale to American millionaires.
Over a dozen copies were peddled to buyers in different parts of the country, for prices ranging from $100,000 to $500,000, with the stipulation that the purchasers be discreet and keep the painting hidden, for their own personal enjoyment.
My question: What happened to these forgeries? They must have been good enough for the crooked dealers to feel confident they wouldn’t be found out.
Would the buyers have destroyed them once it became evident they’d been snookered? Paintings they’d paid a fortune for? Might they have ended up in museums, as curiosities?
I want one! I’ll pay a hundred dollars! It’ll match my sofa!
I don’t know, if I’d paid a whole lot of money for a fake Mona, I might be inclined to keep it and tell people (well, only trusted friends, of course, just the special few who were allowed in on “the Big Secret”) that I have the real one and the Louvre has the dud.
Either that or I’d destroy it. If you just pass it off to the chauffeur, someone from the Art Police might come around, asking about what other stolen paintings you might have acquired.
As I wrote in this thread the sale of the forgeries predated the theft of the original. It was all part of an elaborate con.
It’s not difficult to see why no one came forward admitting to owning one of the forgeries. The “victims” would be not only admitting they had participated in an illegal act but also that they had been successfully duped by conmen.
There was a dude in France who sold the Eiffel tower to a scrap steel dealer. The guy was so embarassed when his demolition crew got arrested that he never admitted what happened. The dude was able to pull the scam a second time. The second victim said what happened, and they caught the guy that time.
Anyhoo, the same is likely true about the forged Monas.