On this day in history, a patriotic man committed the world’s most famous art heist out of love for his country. Today in 1911, an employee at the Louvre named Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa by hiding in a broom closet until the museum closed and then sneaking out with the painting in the middle of the night. Peruggia was an Italian patriot and believed that the work by Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci belonged in an Italian museum instead of at the Louvre in Paris. Peruggia kept the painting in his apartment for two whole years before he was finally caught trying to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
4