Under the headline, LE LOUVRE A PERDU LA“JOCONDE” (The Louvre Has Lost Mona Lisa), the illustrated paperExcelsior published a photomontage. Surrounding Mona Lisa andthe Louvre are (top to bottom, left to right) the museum directorJean Théophile Homolle, and the Sûreté chief Octave Hamard; twoviews of a scaffold on the side of the Louvre, considered a possibleescape route for the thieves; police converging on the museum;and Prefect Louis Lépine inside. I Wednesday, August 23 FOR ONCE, THE FAMOUSLY BLASé Parisians were nonplussed. Who could believe that a thief could lift Mona Lisa off the wall and waltz unnoticed out of the Louvre with the celebrated lady in his arms? Front-page stories in the Paris dailies echoed their shock. “The disappearance of la Joconde by Leonardo da Vinci surpasses the imagination,” Le Figaro wrote. “For many, the Mona Lisa is the Louvre,” the Paris-Journal echoed. “In the eyes of the public, even the uneducated, the Mona Lisa occupies a privileged position that is not to be accounted for by its value alone.”
