Mona Lisa two years, Peruggia grew impatient and was caught when he attempted to sell it to directors of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It was exhibited in the Uffizi Gallery for over two weeks and returned to the Louvre on 4 January 1914. Peruggia served six months in prison for the crime and was hailed for his patriotism in Italy. Before its theft, the "Mona Lisa" was not widely known outside the art world. It was not until the 1860s that some critics, a thin slice of the French intelligentsia, began to hail it as a masterwork of Renaissance painting. In
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