Page 8 - mona lisat

Despite the media circus, the police investigation
turned up few promising leads.

One high-profile suspect was Guillaume Apollinaire,
an avant-garde poet who had once called for the

Louvre to be burned down.

Apollinaire was arrested in September 1911 after

police linked him to the earlier theft of two ancient

statuettes, which had been lifted from the Louvre by

his secretary.

During his interrogation, he implicated his close

friend Pablo Picasso, a 29-year-old Spanish artist
who had purchased the statuettes and used them

as models in his paintings.

While the authorities questioned Apollinaire and
Picasso in connection with the Mona Lisa’s

disappearance, the two future art legends were later

cleared due to lack of evidence.