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
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