Mona Lisa (La Gioconda), Leonardo da Vinci, 1503-1506/Musee Louvre
We seem to be in a season for art theft books. A few months ago there was one about the 1989 break-in at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Now there are two that look back at how the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and stayed missing for more than two years. The accepted facts of that case make for a pretty good story, so too bad both books can’t resist the temptation of also trotting out a bogus speculation about the crime, which they recount at length, then tiptoe away from. But I have a weakness for artworld skullduggery, so I reviewed them anyway.