Yves Chaudron clones of Leonardo's great portrait" while Valfierno made arrangements to steal the real painting. In the early hours of 21 August 1911, Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia and two accomplices carried the "Mona Lisa" out of the museum covered in a painter's smock. Decker asserts that six Chaudron copies had already been sent to the United States ahead of the theft and while the stolen original remained in France, Valfierno followed his fakes and sold each for up to 300,000. The original remained hidden for two years until Peruggia, presenting himself as Leonardo Vincenzo, tried to sell it in Florence, Italy.
Paris in the 18th century Robert; Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, whose work combined classicism and romanticism; and a major neoclassical sculptor from the earlier generation, the sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, famous for his busts of George Washington and Voltaire. The idea of making the Louvre into an art museum had first been proposed in 1747 by Lafont de Saint-Yenne and supported by Diderot in 1765 in the article on the Louvre in the "Encylopedie". The idea was accepted by Louis XVI, who in 1789 began work on the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. The Revolution intervened, and on 27 July 1793 the Convention decreed the creation of a