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
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting film was featured in film festivals after its release such as the London Film Festival in 1979. "Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting" has been noted as one of Ruiz’s masterpieces that challenges the boundaries of cinema and film theory. “You can say "The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting" is a detective film because of its riddle… In a more baroque system as in the system of "Hypothesis", you don’t enjoy finding the enigma.” "Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting" begins with a static shot of a street which appears at first to be a still image or photograph. The opening shot