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
A Session of the Painting Jury In the latter half of the 19th century the Salon was an important and popular institution. The French state would acquire some of the paintings shown in the salon's exhibition, which would be hung in the Musée du Luxembourg. The painting was exhibited in the Salon in 1885 and was subsequently acquired by Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, who later became the Prime Minister of France. Waldeck-Rousseau gave the painting to the Musée du Luxembourg in 1892. It subsequently spent time in the Louvre and the Saint-Denis Museum, Reims, before being assigned to the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, in 1981, where it is still