Perugia and the Mona Lisa

[missyfan45]

this is a interesting tidbit and could be a city of death sequel/prequel or a conspiracy/intrigue themed adventure with or without alien themes and there's a lot of mysteries and footnotes about it.

[Catsmate]

The Theft of the Mona Lisa.
While the painting La Gioconda by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the best known works-of-art in the world today, this fame is actually fairly recent, really only beginning after the picture was stolen in 1911. Not a lot is known about the picture; it's believed that da Vinci began it (atop an earlier painting) around 1504 but didn't finish it until perhaps 1516 (or even later), after he'd moved to the Château du Clos Lucé in France. After his death in 1519 the painting was purchased by Francis I.

• Perfect for historical research, or a researcher getting into trouble or Sixie and Peri (there to see Michelangelo's  David) bumping into them and suspecting the worst.
  

The event that raised he Mona Lisa to mythic status occurred in 1911. On 11 August an Italian decorator, who'd previously worked in the Louvre, named Vincenzo Peruggia dressed as one of the workers and simply lifted the Mona Lisa off it's mounting pegs and smuggled it out under his arm, wrapped in a workman's smock. Not exactly the stuff of heist movies...
Paris was shocked and the newspapers played up the scandal. Exactly why Peruggia stole the painting isn't known; he didn't try and sell it for two years (and that effort, involving Florentine antique dealer Alfredo Geri, failed; Geri handed Peruggia over to the police). At his trial he claimed that the theft was an act of Italian nationalism, returning the painting to it's homeland. He was imprisoned for six months.

• Mind controlled by someone? Influenced by the Alexandrian Society?
  

A more interesting possibility was published by journalist Karl Decker in the Saturday Evening Post in 1932; he claimed that an Argentine con man calling himself the Marquis of Valfiero hired Peruggia to steal the portrait so that he could sell forged copies (the work of a forger named Yves Chaudron) to a number of secretive and gullible American millionaires. The picture would be returned, but Valfiero planned to assure each mark that the portrait in the Louvre was the forgery, and they had the original.

• An interesting idea that would be borrowed, and given a science fictional twist, by a certain BBC television series in 1979...

Game use:
A group of strangers, dressed and behaving oddly, who visit the Louvre just before the picture is stolen and become suspects? The scenario practically writes itself.
Of course things might not be that simple; perhaps they accidentally frustrate the theft and now have to steal the painting themselves (the disappearance wasn't noticed until the following day so they have time).
Or maybe the theft was more complicated; was Eduardo de Valfierno really involved? Or the Alexandrian Society? Was the real painting returned?

A few further notes.
City of Death had a number of inaccuracies regarding the painting.
Firstly it wasn't completed in Florence but in France.
Secondly it's actually painted on wood (white poplar to be exact) and thus cannot be rolled up.
Finally the original version of the painting, should someone travel back to see it, was probably rather larger. Early depictions universally show two pillars flanking the subject, though this may be a second painting
Ccertainly the art theorist and painter Gian Paolo Lomazzo suggested there was a second version and that one of them featured "beautiful eyebrows", not found on the picture in the Louvre.
Or maybe there's a version from a slightly alternate universe, different in minor details.

As a sidenote the Hourglass Club has nine genuine La Gioconda's hanging on it's walls, souvenirs of a rather complicated adventure that Gandalf doesn't talk about.

[missyfan45]

maybe that Lisa was also a fake and one of the Hourglass club ones was real

[Catsmate]

Aug 22, 2020 18:29:23 GMT missyfan45 said:

maybe that Lisa was also a fake and one of the Hourglass club ones was real

Oh all the Hourglass copies are genuine....