Mona Lisa had closed. Peruggia was an Italian patriot who believed Leonardo's painting should have been returned for display in an Italian museum. Peruggia may have been motivated by an associate whose copies of the original would significantly rise in value after the painting's theft. A later account suggested Eduardo de Valfierno had been the mastermind of the theft and had commissioned forger Yves Chaudron to create six copies of the painting to sell in the U.S. while the location of the original was unclear. However, the original painting remained in Europe. After having kept the "Mona Lisa" in his apartment for
Louvre machete attack Louvre machete attack On 3 February 2017, an Egyptian national in France on a tourist visa was shot as he rushed a group of French soldiers guarding a principal entrance to the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, attacking and injuring one soldier with a machete. The soldiers were patrolling the museum as part of Opération Sentinelle, guarding the Carrousel du Louvre, in which an underground shopping mall also serves as a gift shop, ticket sales office, and public entrance to the Museum. The attacker, identified as Abdullah al-Hamahmy, was confirmed by French authorities to have shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the