It is a beautiful Sunday morning on a warm August day. The sweet smell of freshly baked bread begins to slip through the cracks of bakery doors. Tiny cars squeeze through narrow roads, beeping their horns at each other. And people and their dogs start to fill city parks for the first walks of the day.

The city of Paris is slowly waking up to life.

***

Today is a special day that I’ve been waiting for a long, long time. I wake up to warm rays of sunrise, that are sneaking through heavy hotel curtains. The windows were slightly open through the night, so my room is now filled with a smell of buttery croissants. I get up to open the curtains. The sun rays that woke me up now bounce off a glass pyramid in the distance. Excitement is running through my veins, tingling my fingertips. Today is the day when I will finally visit the Louvre Museum with my grandpa. 

As we are getting ready to go out, let me tell you a little about my grandpa. My grandpa, who also goes by Grandpa Al, short for Alexander, is an art historian. My love for art and history began with his bedtime stories about lost treasures. The mythical tales of pirates capturing ships stocked with gold, treasure hunters looking for the Holy Grail, or scavengers on the quest to find the lost island of Atlantis inspired my dreams of me uncovering art that has been lost for centuries. But besides retelling these legends, Grandpa Al also has been teaching me about important pieces of cultural heritage that are alive, today. Whether it’s art or architecture — he knows it all. For example, Pompeii, an ancient city in Italy. Many centuries ago, it was a beautiful and bustling city but in the first century, a local volcano erupted, covering the entire city in lava. The city was buried under ash for hundreds of years, unknown to anyone. To this day, archeologists keep uncovering treasures of everyday Roman life under volcano rock, like a snack bar that still contains meals that were prepared just before the eruption. Wicked.

But let’s put that aside because today, we are seeing the most famous painting in the world — The Mona Lisa. The painting dates back to the early sixteenth century and was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian master of many trades. 

"Portrait of Lisa Gheraridni", known as the Mona Lisa (1503-1519), Leonardo da Vinci. Oil on wood.

“Leonardo was not only a talented artist but also a scientist and engineer,” Grandpa Al says as we walk along the Seine River on the way to the Louvre. “His artistic talents allowed him to put his more technical ideas on paper.” 

As I begin to listen closely to the next interesting story Grandpa Al begins to tell, he pulls his phone out of his old-school jean pocket and swipes through pictures of yellowed notebook papers filled with sketches of different shapes. “Look at this parachute! It’s a Leonardo’s invention.”

At hearing my gaggle, Grandpa Al puffs out his chest to save his honor, and says, “Don’t laugh at genius, Nicole. Leonardo produced many notebooks, making unique creations, that for many years were hidden away, scattered, or simply lost. But over centuries, these notebooks have been found and Leonardo’s work was brought to life by modern technology.” He goes on to say that besides a parachute, Leonardo also invented a helicopter, a military diving suit, and a robot (that looks more like a knight costume powered by mechanics).

“Leonardo was a true Renaissance man,” Grandpa Al says with a big smile on his face. I ask what he means and he continues to say, “A Renaissance man is a saying. You call it someone who does a lot of things and does them well.”

“Am I a Renaissance man if I draw, write, dance, and play basketball?” I wonder aloud.

“Well, are you good at those things?”

“Yes, I am,” I respond with pride but deep down inside, I know that I suck at basketball. I put the blame on my height — too short for basketball but too tall for some water park rides. What a life!

“Then you are a Renaissance man or Renaissance woman or whoever you want to be.”

“Was Mona Lisa also a Renaissance woman?”

Actually, I know a little bit about her. I did my research, of course. Her full name was Lisa del Gherardini. The title of the painting translates to, “Lady Lisa”. Lisa’s husband, a wealthy silk merchant from Florence, commissioned Leonardo to paint a portrait of his wife to celebrate the birth of their second son.

“Well, she can be called a woman of the Renaissance because she lived during that time,” Grandpa Al explains, “but it’s hard to call Lisa a Renaissance woman. You see, with some exceptions, most women couldn’t own property, attend university, or defend their rights in court during those times. Their work was, more often than not, limited to being a good housewife to her husband and family.”

Grandpa Al continues as he looks at the disappointment overtaking my face, “There are some great female artists that we know today, like Artemisia Gentileschi, who broke barriers with her art.”

Grandpa Al’s pep talk boosts my confidence and belief that I, as a girl, can do anything in the world I live in. But then why almost all of the detectives and treasure hunters that we know of, that are on TV or in books, are men and boys? My mind wanders off in thought until it is interrupted by a shriek from a man behind us in the line. A pigeon has pooped on his shoulder.

How long are we going to stand in line? It feels like it’s been ages and we moved only a few steps forward.

Coincidentally, we start moving a few steps forward and finally enter the main hall. As soon as we scan our tickets, I start to march quickly to get to the Mona Lisa before the crowds. You cannot run through museum halls but I bend the rule a little by walking as fast as I can. Technically, I am not running but rather marching like a nervous soldier on the way to a bathroom. Although a lot older, Grandpa Al has no trouble keeping up the pace behind me. I think he might be as excited as I am. The main staircase leads us to The Winged Victory of Samothrace, a Greek statue standing on a marble ship prow. Passing by the sculpture, we move through a passage of paintings blurred by the speed at which we go.

As I get to our destinations, ahead of Grandpa Al, of course, I stop to scan the room for the Mona Lisa. After a few 360-degree turns, I start to see stars around me. I stop twirling in place and shake off the stars to look for the painting. But it is nowhere to be found.

The room presents an empty wall with only four bare hooks as evidence that something once was hanging there. I turn around to show my puzzled face to Grandpa Al, who’s catching his breath after a marathon he just ran. He looks up at me with a smile on his face, happy to achieve a silver medal but his happiness is interrupted by the same reason for my puzzled face — Mona Lisa is gone!

The Louvre Musem (1911).

Maybe it’s not gone-gone, I think to myself. Maybe it’s just missing… temporarily?

“Grandpa,” I turn around to see a single drop of sweat fall down his forehead. “Don’t you think it’s strange that the Mona Lisa is not here?

“It is strange, Nicole,” Grandpa Al says as he leans in closer to the empty wall. “Sometimes an artwork is temporarily taken down for conservation or an exhibition loan to another museum but whenever that happens, curators put a note in place of the art informing visitors why it is missing. But there’s no note here."

Weird. I once again get a tingling sensation in my fingers and that happens either when I am very excited or when something does not feel right. As the tingling overtakes my palms, a large group of people walks in through an archway that connects the museum rooms. Leading the army of tourists is a woman who walks straight as a needle. Also, her super white teeth seem to reflect the bright museum light. Anyway, I spot a name tag on her with the title, “Curator”, thanks to my eagle eyes. Bingo! It must be a curator walk-through.

The curator turns around to the crowd and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to present you with the treasure of the Louvre Museum…. The Mona Lisa!” She holds up her hand, pointing at the four bare hooks on the empty wall. The listeners look at each other in confusion. Once the curator turns around, the big smile on her face melts, and that’s when I step in.

“Excuse me, do you know where the Mona Lisa is?” Startled, the curator looks at me with fright in her eyes.

Scrambling to find words of confidence, she responds, “It must be at a conservation department for a check-up.”

“But if it were to be given for conservation, a plaque would be placed to let visitors know. It’s a standard procedure,” Grandpa Al chips in. While he begins to engage in an investigation with the curator, I decide that in the meantime, I will do my own investigation to find the Mona Lisa.

***

Clue number #1: White paint shoe prints.

The very first clue that catches my attention is a path of white shoe traces under the empty spot where the Mona Lisa once hung. This is my start. I follow the prints from one room onto the next through the arched entryway and trace them back to a door with a metal plaque that reads, “Pour les salariés uniquement”. Ugh, I wish I had chosen French at school as a language class.

I ask an older woman walking by me for help in translating the text. Honestly, I am only guessing that she knows French but by her looks, I am seeing that the French elegance emanates from her. She leans in closer to the sign, pulls out a pair of glasses in a thick black frame from her purse, and says, “It reads, for employees only, dear.” Bingo! My intuition never fails.

“For employees only” but the door is partly open. Strange. I look around to see if anyone’s looking at me but no, no one is, so I quickly squeeze inside. I pull a string hanging from the ceiling and puf, the light illuminates this tiny storage room with shelves full of cleaning supplies, hardware tools, and … white paint! That’s it — someone who took the painting must have been in this room and spilled the paint, probably by accident. I turn 180 degrees to see a long beige trench coat…

Clue number #2: Italian trench coat.

I check the tag, Made in Italy. I get a whiff and it does smell like a freshly brewed espresso. It’s actually quite a nice smell. I whiff some more and at that moment, the door opens to angry looks of Grandpa Al and a security guard. Busted, again.

“It’s private property, little lady. Pour les salariés uniquement. For employees only! Not for les visiteurs!”

“Excuse me, sir,” I say, and although I notice myself getting angrier and angrier at the guard for interrupting my investigation, he is right that I am snooping around places that I shouldn’t be in. Yet, my courage and perseverance overpower my anger. “My name is Nicole and I am an art detective. I am investigating the case of the missing Mona Lisa.”

“My granddaughter is right. The painting is missing,” Grandpa Al chips in as I come out of the storage room.

“It is not, it is in the conservation department!” The curator appears out of nowhere, starting yet another debate with Grandpa Al.

“It is!” Grandpa Al says.

“It is not!” The curator fights back.

As the word match continues between the adults, I seek the moment to sneak out of their eyesight yet again. I follow the shoe traces back to the painting, and follow them as they are walking out. The pattern of steps takes me through the maze of corridors filled with beautiful paintings by Delacroix, Veronese, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Bernini, Poussin, and many, many others. Portraits hanging on white walls stare at me as I start gaining traction. I pass by beautiful countryside landscapes and still-life paintings that come alive when you stare at them for a longer time. Although the art is distracting, I keep my focus on the shoe marks, which I soon find out that they lead outside, through another service door on the ground floor. But these are locked and I see that you can only go through them using a keycard. Oh no, “pour les salariés uniquement”, again.

I hide around the corner and wait for the door to open. As soon as that happens, I sneak through the doors that lead to a courtyard surrounded by arched hallways. I spot a frame on the corner of the door. Why in the world there’s a frame? And it looks awfully familiar… I pull a museum pamphlet out of my pants pocket that I picked up in the entryway to the museum only to find out…

Clue number #3: The frame.

It’s the Mona Lisa frame! And the footsteps extend beyond the door through the courtyard and again through another exit door — to the outside world.

“Nicole… Nicole…” I hear Grandpa Al calling my name. He must worry I disappeared. I know I should not have left him alone in a large and crowded museum.

As I walk in, we lock eyes and both exclaim at the same time: “The Mona Lisa was stolen!” As the words come out of our mouths, the guards quickly surround the area. The curator runs up to us. “We are locking down the Louvre, no one leaves”. Sirens blast at full volume. Everyone is focusing on the museum but no one is seeing the clues.

I take Grandpa Al by his hand and escape the museum through the back employee door, following the shoe traces. The more we walk the path of the marks, the less visible they become and finally, they disappear at the entrance to the main train station.

“Nicole, let’s wind down a little. I need some rest, it was an eventful day,” Grandpa Al says in defeat. We sit down at a nearby café and wind down with croissants.

“Grandpa, I have a theory. The first clue was shoe prints out of white paint. I traced them back to the closet, where there were paints, materials, and other handyman things. So the thief must have started there. And then he went to the painting, took it out of the hangers, and walked with the Mona Lisa to the courtyard exit. There, he took the frame out and walked to the train station.”

“To leave the city,” Grandpa Al continues. “Good point, Nicole. The thief must have been a museum employee to have access to these doors.”

“And then there was an Italian coat left in the closet. That smell of freshly made espresso!”

“Oh, Italians do love their coffee…” Grandpa Al laughs while wiping a milk mustache off of his face.

I see Grandpa Al putting the pieces of the puzzle in his mind, while I already know the answer.

“Grandpa, it was an employee of the Louvre Museum. He was an Italian man. And he ran out of the city with the painting.”

“You’re probably right, Nicole. But there’s nothing we can do about that. Let’s go, we will be late for the train back home.” Grandpa Al, responds with sadness in his voice as we get up to walk through the main hall, passing by whispers echoing “The Mona Lisa is gone.”

***

Today is yet another special day that I’ve been waiting for the entire year. It is a beautiful sunny morning on a cold December day. The sweet smell of freshly baked gingerbread cookies slips through the cracks of my room’s doors. My mom’s decorative train is making choo-choo noises from downstairs. And I just know that Dad is filling the Christmas tree with wrapped presents.

My home is slowly waking up to life.

I rise from the bed, swish the curtains to the window sides, and welcome the light reflecting from mountains of white snow. With excitement and tangled feet, I run downstairs to see the most heartwarming scenery. All of my family is here. And it’s all a mess.

While trying to sneakily steal a cookie for breakfast and avoid the eyes of my mom who is making a Christmas breakfast with her two sisters in the kitchen, I trip over a tower of presents made by my dad, as he’s trying his best to nicely wrap them.

“Ay, Nicole, watch your step!” he scolds at me and turns to Greg. “You see, if you would have helped me as I asked, we would have it done by now and put the stuff away.”

I am so happy to see my brother back home from university. After he greets me with a high-five, Greg pulls together the presents and puts them under the tree. “I was busy setting the Christmas vibe, Dad.”

“Nice excuse, Greg,” I comment full with irony, and run up to my grandfather to hug him good morning. He’s sitting in an armchair, which is warmed by a fireplace next to it. As he puts away a newspaper (he likes daily crosswords in the morning), I notice from the side of my eye the biggest headline ever, “60 DETECTIVES SEEK STOLEN 'MONA LISA'. But No Clue Has Yet Been Discovered to Whereabouts of Leonardo's Masterpiece.” Underneath, there’s an illustration of two men taking off the painting from the wall.

It’s been almost half a year since the theft of the Mona Lisa. And while it isn’t news anymore and the story has slowly been fading away from people’s minds, the painting still hasn’t been found. There are a lot of conspiracy theories circulating, naming world-class artists, famous art thieves, businessmen, or celebrities as the masterminds behind the theft. But it seems off to me. Why would a popular person expose themselves in such a way? It must have been a person who knows the Louvre Museum inside-out to be able to find the shortest way to the exit AND have access to the storage unit. I bet that it was an inside job. But the clues found lean into a theory that the person was Italian. That was curious to me. So I did a little bit of digging into the history of the painting.

Well, first of all, Leonardo da Vinci was Italian. He was active in Florence, Milan, and for a little while Rome too, working for the Pope. Mona Lisa was most likely painted in Florence, so how did the painting end up in Paris? Well, Leonardo himself brought it there. Kind of. He moved to France, with the painting in hand, at the invitation from the King of France and stayed there until his death. It was placed at the Louvre after the French Revolution. And at one point, it was in the bedroom of Napoleon (!). Interesting…

Okay, back to reality. I find myself sitting at the edge of the armchair and helping Grandpa Al with the crossword. In the next moment, a phone is ringing from a distance. It’s Grandpa Al’s phone but it takes him a good few seconds to catch up that someone is calling him. He runs to get the phone.

“Hello?” Grandpa Al answers following a grunt to clear his throat. Who calls on a Christmas morning? I wonder. “This is he.” He looks at me, changing his tone to sound more professional rather than surprised or angry that someone is calling him, now. For the last few months, his phone has been popping with calls like freshly made popcorn. Newspaper editors, TV reporters, book writers, art dealers, and many other people from all over the world have been calling him, trying to get more information on the case of the stolen Mona Lisa. It’s not every day that an art historian is a witness to the theft of the most famous painting in the world.

I cannot hear what’s on the other side of the phone but my Grandpa Al’s face goes white and his eyes go wide. He scouts pen and paper, and leans on a side table in the hallway.

“Aha, Aha, Aha… Wait, wait, okay okay, we will be there.”

Grandpa Al rushingly puts on a white puffy winter coat and a white wool hat, which makes him look like a snowman that’s only missing a carrot on his face.

“Nicole, I need to leave,” Grandpa Al says as he rushes outside to hail a taxi. “A man named Leonard called me. He wants to sell the Mona Lisa. I have to catch a train to Florence to get there by midnight.”

My eyes widen. I quickly run to my room, pack my backpack, and follow Grandpa Al outside. “We are going together, Grandpa. I am not leaving the opportunity for the thief to get out of my sight, again.”

***

Out of the train window, I observe wintery landscapes that remind me of some of the paintings that I saw at the Louvre. But instead of motionless sceneries, I look at nature that is very animated, very much alive.

“Nicole, I know that you know but I still need to tell you this,” Grandpa Al says as he puts down yet another crossword. “You came with me on this adventure but this is very important to me and to the world. Therefore, I need you to be careful. Don’t go venturing by yourself, stay near me at all times. We might be meeting the man behind the biggest art heist in history.”

“Noted, Grandpa. What’s the plan?”

“Mr. Leonard called me to broker a deal and I am taking Mr. Giovianni Poggi with me to meet Mr. Leonard at Ponte Vecchio at midnight. Mr. Poggi is the director of the Uffizi Gallery, one of the most famous museums in the world.”

I ask Grandpa Al why Mr. Poggi will be there with us.

“He will be posing as a buyer for the painting. His knowledge will help me determine whether the Mona Lisa that Leonard has is authentic,” Grandpa Al says as we arrive at the station. “But he will be there will me, not us, Nicole. You will be staying at the museum nearby.”

Wow, I guess old age makes Grandpa Al a bit delusional. I would never miss such an opportunity to catch the most notorious art thief in the world!

“Welcome to Italy,” Mr. Poggi greets us as we take the first steps onto the train platform and extends his arms to embrace Grandpa Al. “It’s good to see you, again, old friend.”

As they hug and pat each other on the back, which I guess is an old-school way for men to greet each other, he turns to me and says, “And you must be Nicole, the art detective. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I hope you will be able to help us get the painting back.”

“Of course I will,” I smile and I think to myself, I have a great plan prepared already.

***

It’s a few hours before midnight, so Mr. Poggi takes us on a tour around the Uffizi Gallery. Mr. Poggi notices me struggling to carry the backpack on the way to the museum so he proposes to put it in the cloakroom next to the entrance. He helps to take it off of my back but he almost drops it on the floor.

“What are you carrying there, Nicole? Rocks?” I nod in agreement. But it’s not rocks. It’s something way better.

As we are wandering around the main hall on the upper floor, the moon’s light through the row of windows illuminates our path. Have you ever seen the movie, “Night at the Museum”? It’s Christmas Eve and there’s a saying that at midnight, animals gain a human voice and start to speak. Maybe at this time, people in paintings come to life as well.

Since we are already here, it makes sense to see other Leonardo’s paintings. So we make a pit stop by “Adoration of the Magi”, which is one of his unfinished paintings. There are only a few paintings by Leonardo in the world, making each one of them greatly unique, valuable, and of course, vulnerable to theft.

“Nicole, it’s time,” Grandpa Al says to me. I move my eyes from the painting and start marching behind him. Right before the exit from the museum, he says, “You wait here with the museum guard.”

But I don’t. As the door shuts behind Grandpa Al and Mr. Poggi, I grab my backpack from the cloakroom and make my way toward the exit when —

“Excuse me, little lady, but Mr. Poggi specifically said that you need to stay here, at the museum, under my supervision,” the museum guard stops.

“I am just looking for the bathroom, sir.”

“With the backpack?”

Oh, he got me. Nicole, think, quick!

“Uhm, I am on my period," a lie blurts out of my mouth. "I'm bringing pads with me. Do I need to take them out of my backpack?” Now, I got him.

The guard’s eyes squint like a cramp and he points to the back. So I turn and walk to the first bathroom I see. Why do periods make people uncomfortable?

I spot a slightly ajar window, so I hop on a heater, open the window, and sneak through it. Yes, I am out! Now off to the Ponte Vecchio.

I catch up to Grandpa Al and Mr. Poggi, thankfully they aren’t the fastest men in Italy. I am a few meters behind them but I can still overhear their conversation.

“Al, do you really believe this guy has THE Mona Lisa?”

“Why would he lie?”

“To get money out of it. The painting is priceless, even on the black market.”

“And risk his life if someone very wealthy and very powerful finds out it’s a fake? I doubt it.”

Interesting, but I have a plan, so I split from them as they are walking towards the Ponte Vecchio. I turn left, instead of right, and walk through Ponte aliolla Grazie to get to the other side of the bridge. And then at the entrance to the Ponte Vecchio, I open my backpack to take out the white paint I brought from home and I spill it across the bridge. I will catch the thief the same way I found him.

As the clock chimes midnight, I quickly hide behind one of the arches. An unfamiliar man holding a large leather hand luggage emerges from the darkness, like a villain in a movie. Well, he is a villain in this movie. And then he steps on the white paint. Gotcha. He fusses about something in Italian. I can only make out: “bellissime scarpe”, “rovinate”, “perché?” as he raises his hands above his head.

“C'è qualcuno qui?” I put my head back behind the arched column as Leonard turns his head left and right.

“A qui, a qui,” Mr. Poggi yells from the distance as he and Grandpa Al jog to Leonard to catch up with him. They are mumbling in Italian so I cannot make out the words but by their movements and body language, things aren’t going well.

The scene is quite comical, actually. Mr. Poggi grabs the handle of the luggage and wrestles with Leonard for the bag, while Grandpa All pulls Mr. Poggi from behind, trying to add force to their side. Eventually, they all fall back. The luggage opens to a rectangular panel wrapped in red silk. The cloth slightly slid off the panel to reveal a part of the painting — the eyes of the Mona Lisa. As we all look at it with eyes and mouths wide open, Leonard takes the opportunity to swiftly pack up and run away. I join Grandpa Al and Mr. Poggi in the chase but Leonard outruns us, turns the corner, and disappears into the darkness as expectedly as he appeared in the first place.

“It’s over. This was the thief and it was our only chance to catch him!” Mr. Poggi weeps. “We will never see the Mona Lisa, again!”

“What.. are you… doing here… Nicole?” I catch Grandpa Al off guard as he catches his breath. “I told you to stay put at the museum!”

“If I stayed at the museum, you would have lost Leonard.”

“But we did and now we must go home,” Grandpa Al says in defeat. So I point to the white shoe traces leaving Ponte Vecchio.

“Yes, we will go home. But first, we go to Leonard’s home.”

So we do, and you guessed it — we catch the guy and find the Mona Lisa. Here’s what happens:

We follow the footsteps nearby and upstairs to the apartment building. Mr. Poggi doesn’t want to take any more chances, so in the meantime, he calls the police. Within a few minutes, a whole brigade of Carabinieri arrive at the spot and knock out Leonard’s apartment door. There, they find the Mona Lisa, wrapped in a red silk cloth. Rumor goes, Leonard wanted to use Mona Lisa as a shield from the Carabinieri but I guess he wasn’t fast enough. Thankfully, we were.

And that’s how we found the most famous painting in the world.

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Read about what you cannot see with your eyes.

Portrait of Lisa Gheraridni, known as the Mona Lisa, c. 1503-1519

🎨 Oil on wood.

📍  Louvre Museum, Paris.

On the morning of August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa vanished, leaving behind an empty space of four bare hooks on the Louvre wall. The search continued for twenty-eight months. In November 1913, an international art dealer, Alfredo Geri, and the director of Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Giovanni Poggi, uncovered the Mona Lisa in a hotel room in Florence, hidden in a small wooden trunk under a bed and wrapped in red silk. The painting was taken by a man who tried to sell it to Geri, using an alias “Leonard”. That man was Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre handyman.

According to sources, Peruggia hid overnight in a storage closet by Salon Carré, a gallery where the Mona Lisa was located, emerging early morning of the next day. He took the painting down and with the frame, he put it underneath the white museum gown. At the trial, Peruggia stressed his desire to bring the painting back to Italy, describing the Mona Lisa as “at least one of the many treasures, which especially in the Napoleonic era, had been stolen from Italy.” Peruggia served a six-month sentence yet some claim he did not act alone. The Mona Lisa was finally returned to the Louvre in January 1914. 

Here’s where Peruggia got it wrong. Although the Mona Lisa was briefly housed in Napoleon’s bedroom, it wasn’t seized from Italy by the Napoleonic army. In fact, the painting left its country of origin in 1517 with the artist himself, when Da Vinci traveled with the portrait to France at the invitation from King Francis I. After Da Vinci’s death, the Mona Lisa entered the King’s collection. And after the French Revolution, it was moved to the Louvre, where it resides today.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian Renaissance painter, scientist, and inventor. Some of the most known paintings by da Vinci are The Last Supper, Lady with an Ermine, and the Vitruvian Man. He is considered one of the most famous people in the world, contributing his multifaceted talent to art and world heritage as well as to the modern understanding of human anatomy and mechanics. 

Vocabulary (in order of appearance):

To commission an artwork - to formally request someone to create an artwork.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1632) - an Italian Baroque painter. One of the most recognized female painters in the world

The Winged Victory of Samothrace (190 BC) - a Greek marble sculpture at the Louvre museum, which was found on the island of Samothrace. It is recognized as the goddess Niké, representing victory.

Art conservation - maintenance of art and objects of cultural heritage to preserve it from future damage and deterioration. It differs from art restoration, which means to repair an artwork.

Curator - a keeper or custodian of a museum or other collection. Also, a person in charge of creating and managing exhibitions.

Art heist - another term for art theft. It is a criminal activity involving the stealing of art.

Art broker - another term for an art dealer. A middleman for transactions involving art. An art broker is a qualified professional who buys and sells artworks through galleries, museums, stores, and auction houses. 

Adoration of the Magi - an unfinished painting by Leonardo da Vinci, began around 1481. It presents a common Christian subject of the three kings kneeling in adoration of baby Jesus held in the arms of the Virgin Mary.

Black market - a system of exchange that omits official government regulations. Stolen artworks are often sold through the black market to avoid being caught.

Carabinieri - Italian police that has a special department dedicated to art crime, called The Carabinieri Art Squad.

Selected bibliography:

Lepacka, Anna Maria, Renesans. Historia, Sztuka, Ludzie, Warsaw 2017.

“Exceptionally well-preserved snack bar unearthed in Pompeii.” The Guardian, 26 December 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/26/exceptionally-well-preserved-snack-bar-unearthed-in-pompeii

“From the ‘Mona Lisa’ to ‘The Wedding Feast at Cana’. Louvre Museum, www.louvre.fr.

All illustrations, unless otherwise noted, are by Natalia Kwiatkowska.

Dedication & acknowledgments:

I dedicate this story, about the most famous artwork of all, to Cassandra - a girl who has been loving art and museums since she was very little. Maybe one day, you will follow in the footsteps of your mom and battle the thieves of art. But today, I wish for art to be a source of inspiration and guidance in your life.