Free Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection by Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler

without a ransom demand, that question increasingly circulated through Paris. Suspicion
     began to fall on the photographers who were licensed to work in the museum. According to the magazine
Gil Blas,
those photographers had carte blanche to remove “any picture desired every Monday without any special authorization, and
     to remove it to the roof [where the sunlight was suitable for photographs] or any other suitable position for work.” 22 According to this theory, a photographer had accidentally damaged the painting, and to cover up the careless way it had been
     handled, the museum had blamed its disappearance on thieves. Supposedly, a team of restorers was working to repair the painting,
     and when they finished, its “recovery” would be announced.
iii
    After two weeks of investigation, the Louvre was once again opened to the public, and an even greater number of visitors than
     usual came to gape at the four hooks on the wall that marked the place where
La Joconde
used to hang. The crowds “didn’t look at the other pictures,” one reporter noted. “They contemplated at length the dusty
     space where the divine
Mona Lisa
had smiled.… And feverishly they took notes. It was even more interesting for them than if La Joconde had been in its place.” 23 A tourist, the aspiring writer Franz Kafka, visiting the Louvre on a trip to Paris in late 1911, noted in his diary the “crowd
     in the Salon Carré, the excitement and the knots of people, as if the Mona Lisa had just been stolen.” 24 People began to place bouquets of flowers on the floor at the spot where the painting had once hung.
    Leonardo’s masterpiece had been famous before among well-educated people, but the publicity surrounding its disappearance
     made it a subject of popular culture. Songwriters in the cabarets of Montmartre always made use of current topics, and the
     theft of a painting of a beautiful woman was a godsend. One song, “L’as-tu vue? la Joconde!!” (“Have you seen her? the Gioconda!!”)
     had a stanza making fun of the guards (“It couldn’t be stolen, we guard her all the time, except on Mondays”) and had La Joconde
     herself complaining that she left because she didn’t want to be constantly stared at. 25 Another cabaret revue was said to have featured a line of topless Joconde girls. The respected journal
La Comoedia Illustré
photographed twelve well-known actresses in the clothing and pose of Mona Lisa and published them under the heading
Les sourires qui nous restent!
(“The smiles that we still have”). 26 One cabaret used a reproduction of
La Joconde
on a poster, with the caption, “I smiled at the Louvre. Now I am merry at the Moulin de la Chanson.” 27 The Zig-Zag cigarette paper company proclaimed that Mona Lisa had left the Louvre because she was anxious to have a smoke.
     High Life Tailor ran an ad claiming that the undersecretary of state of beaux-arts, hoping to avoid public execution for his
     failure of duty, had implored the tailor company to send over a photograph of their suits to hang in the Salon Carré in place
     of the lost painting. Even a corset maker portrayed its newest garment on a figure of the Mona Lisa, who at last was revealed
     to have perfect hips.
    Inevitably the French movie industry also began to capitalize on the furor over the theft. The Pathé company, which had filmed
     a series of adventures about the detective Nick Winter (a knockoff of the popular American fictional detective Nick Carter),
     released
Nick Winter et le vol de la Joconde
(
Nick Winter and the Theft of the Mona Lisa
) in the fall of 1911. Franz Kafka and his friend Max Brod were among those who went to see it at the grand Omnia Pathé theater.
     Brod summarized the plot of the five-minute film, which turned the event into slapstick:
    The picture opened with the presentation of M. Croumolle (everyone knows that it means “Homolle” 28 and no one protests against the perfidious way they are going after the