Mona Lisa he stresses that the images never existed. Kemp is also adamant that Cotte’s images in no way establish the existence of a separate underlying portrait. On 21 August 1911, the painting was stolen from the Louvre. The theft was not discovered until the next day, when painter Louis Béroud walked into the museum and went to the Salon Carré where the "Mona Lisa" had been on display for five years, only to find four iron pegs on the wall. Béroud contacted the head of the guards, who thought the painting was being photographed for promotional purposes. A few hours later,
Louis Lépine Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated. The real thief was Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia an Italian wishing to return it to Italy. He was caught with the painting two years later when he attempted to sell it to the directors of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. One of Lépine's last successes was the capture and destruction of the notorious Bonnot Gang (La Bande à Bonnot), an anarchist criminal group that operated in France and Belgium during the Belle Époque, from 1911 to 1912.In 1910 Lépine had instigated La Brigade Criminelle a dedicated