Guillaume Apollinaire returned one of the stolen statues to the French newspaper the "Paris-Journal". Apollinaire implicated his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of the "Mona Lisa", but he was also exonerated. The theft of the "Mona Lisa" was perpetrated by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian house painter who acted alone and was only caught two years later when he tried to sell the painting in Florence. Apollinaire wrote the preface for the first Cubist exposition outside of Paris; "VIII Salon des Indépendants", Brussels, 1911. In an open-handed preface to the catalogue of the Brussels Indépendants show,
Louvre this treaty, Italian cities were required to contribute pieces of art and patrimony to take part in Napoleon's "parades of booty" through Paris before being put into the Louvre Museum. One of the most famous pieces taken under this program was the Horses of Saint Mark. The four antique bronze horses, which had adorned the basilica of San Marco in Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, were brought to Paris to reside atop Napoleon's Arc du Carrousel in Paris in 1797. Several churches and palaces, including Saint Mark's Basilica, were looted by the French, which outraged the Italians