Guillaume Apollinaire returned one of the stolen statues to the French newspaper the "Paris-Journal". Apollinaire implicated his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of the "Mona Lisa", but he was also exonerated. The theft of the "Mona Lisa" was perpetrated by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian house painter who acted alone and was only caught two years later when he tried to sell the painting in Florence. Apollinaire wrote the preface for the first Cubist exposition outside of Paris; "VIII Salon des Indépendants", Brussels, 1911. In an open-handed preface to the catalogue of the Brussels Indépendants show,
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