Eduardo de Valfierno the Valfierno story. Eduardo de Valfierno Eduardo de Valfierno (1850–1931), who posed as a "marqués" (marquis), was an Argentine con man who allegedly masterminded the theft of the "Mona Lisa" in 1911. In 1932 journalist Karl Decker published a story in the "Saturday Evening Post" claiming Valfierno paid several men to steal the work of art from the Louvre, including museum employee Vincenzo Peruggia. On August 21, 1911 Peruggia hid the "Mona Lisa" under his coat and simply walked out the door. Before the heist took place, Valfierno allegedly commissioned French art restorer and forger Yves Chaudron to make six
Gerard de Lairesse for the decline in Dutch painting. Two hundred years after his death in 1711 the "Encyclopædia Britannica", 11th Edition (1911) gave no listing at all for De Lairesse, while devoting four pages of solid text to Rembrandt. Works by De Lairesse are now on display at many museums around the world, including the Rijksmuseum and Amsterdams Historisch Museum in Amsterdam, the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Gallery in London, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 2016-2017, an exhibition