Who stole the Mona Lisa?

[wallflower]

If you liked this heist story, these are two of my all-time favorite HN stories:

"Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1215138

"The Silver Thief"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1020547

[palish]

SPOILER ALERT: The first link's top comment reads "You have to give the guy credit for <foo and bar and baz>", ruining the story. :/

[InclinedPlane]

This is actually an interesting entire family of crimes. Steal a unique, highly valuable item, sell fake copies for full-price now that it's plausible to be the real thing (especially if you set up a sale before the actual theft takes place), then return the original if you care enough. Nobody will turn you in because they'd be admitting to attempting to buy stolen goods.

[ertdfgcb]

This could be really dangerous if you aren't careful who you sell to.

[meattle]

If you're interested in learning more about the painting, I created an entire mini website about the Mona Lisa a few years ago:

http://hepguru.com/monalisa/

It was featured by USA Today, etc. You may like it.

[rsiqueira]

One of the best versions of Mona Lisa is the one engraved by Sanchez-Toda (Spanish bank note and postal stamp designer): http://rsiqueira.postbit.com/mona-lisa

[mkopinsky]

Well-written, interesting article. Worth clicking through and reading.

[rman666]

+1

[nodata]

I like the article, but why is it in the FT? This is more something that suits sister-pulication The Economist.

[dagw]

FT Weekend and FT Magazine do these sorts of stories all the time. People who spend their weekdays worrying about finance want to relax on the weekend and read fun and interesting stories.

[corin_]

This piece is from the FT magazine, you can see the kind of content they produce for that at http://www.ft.com/magazine

So, could perhaps be argued that the FT magazine is out of place, but within it this piece certainly fits just fine. And personally I rather like it, as an FT subscriber it's nice to get some bonus, often good, content even if it's not related to finance.

[ComputerGuru]

Not really. It's out of place in both.

Beautifully written, at any rate. Very catching and appealing!

[muriithi]

"The far-right Action Française newspaper blamed the Jews"

Looks like prejudice is as old as humanity itself!

[corin_]

Wow that's a terrible comment - I won't even point out the difference between 100 years old and the age of humanity.

But any basic knowledge of history should tell you that anti-semitic feelings in Europe were building up in the 19th century. For example Hitler was a huge fan of Richard Wagner (who died 28 years before this 1911 theft), who wrote a famous article, first published anonymously then later republished in his own name, called "Das Judenthum in der Musik", blasting Jewish composers such as Mendlesohn.