The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity

by Nicholas Day · 2023

First published 2023 · 288 pages · English

8 quotes ★ 4.05 (7,328) Nonfiction

Quotes from the Book

Leonard da Vinci had painted the Mona Lisa. But Vincenzo Perugia had turned it into The Mona Lisa.

It’s no longer good-natured or innocent. It’s mysterious, alluring, unknowable. It’s a puzzle of a portrait.

In a conspiracy theory, belief matters more than facts. Belief in a conspiracy inevitably leads you away from the facts.

It was a very hard needle to thread.

Leonardo is later—some five hundred years later—called the most relentlessly curious man in history.

If the Mona Lisa is the most famous face in art history, Les Demoiselles is a hatchet thrown at it. It's not a pretty painting. Its brutal and uncomfortable.

Word of his midnight activities gets out. 'The pope has found out that I have skinned three corpses,' Leonardo writes in his notebook. He gets off easy. He's simply told: please stop skinning corpses.

The Lourve, he concluded, with an insult designed to puncture French pride, "is less well protected than a Spanish museum.

Did you know?

The book is illustrated throughout with black-and-white art by Brett Helquist, best known for illustrating A Series of Unfortunate Events.
It won the 2024 Robert F. Sibert Medal for the most distinguished informational book for children.
It also won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction.
Among the historical suspects the book considers in the 1911 theft is the painter Pablo Picasso, who was briefly questioned.
The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and recovered about two years later.
The book was named a best book of the year by outlets including Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and NPR.

About Nicholas Day

Nicholas Day is a writer based in Northampton, Massachusetts. He is the author of the adult book Baby Meets World, about the science and history of infancy, and has written regularly for Slate, with work also appearing in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

More about the author →

About the book

The Mona Lisa Vanishes is a work of middle-grade narrative nonfiction by Nicholas Day, illustrated by Brett Helquist. It recounts the 1911 theft of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece from the Louvre, weaving together the mystery of who took the painting, the investigation that followed, and the life of Leonardo himself. Day uses the heist as a lens to explain how a portrait that was barely a household name before the crime became, in its aftermath, the most famous painting in the world.

Across its interlocking threads, the book explores fame and how it is manufactured, the role of newspapers and early-twentieth-century media sensation in fixing the Mona Lisa in the public imagination, and the gulf between an artwork's making and the myth that later surrounds it. It also examines Leonardo da Vinci as a restless, often distractible genius, and how chance, celebrity, and conspiracy theories combined to elevate one painting above all others.

The book was widely acclaimed on publication, earning starred reviews and winning the 2024 Robert F. Sibert Medal and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for nonfiction. It appeared on numerous best-of-year lists from outlets including Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus, NPR, and the New York Public Library, praised for turning a true art-history story into a witty, page-turning read for young readers.

Book details

First published: 2023
Length: 288 pages
Reading time: 5 hours
Author: Nicholas Day
Genre: Nonfiction
Goodreads rating: 4.05 (7k ratings)

Critical reception

Won the 2024 Robert F. Sibert Medal from the American Library Association.
Won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction.
Received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist.
Named a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Kirkus, Booklist, NPR, and the New York Public Library, among others.