Eduardo de Valfierno the Valfierno story. Eduardo de Valfierno Eduardo de Valfierno (1850–1931), who posed as a "marqués" (marquis), was an Argentine con man who allegedly masterminded the theft of the "Mona Lisa" in 1911. In 1932 journalist Karl Decker published a story in the "Saturday Evening Post" claiming Valfierno paid several men to steal the work of art from the Louvre, including museum employee Vincenzo Peruggia. On August 21, 1911 Peruggia hid the "Mona Lisa" under his coat and simply walked out the door. Before the heist took place, Valfierno allegedly commissioned French art restorer and forger Yves Chaudron to make six
Paris in the 18th century Robert; Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, whose work combined classicism and romanticism; and a major neoclassical sculptor from the earlier generation, the sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, famous for his busts of George Washington and Voltaire. The idea of making the Louvre into an art museum had first been proposed in 1747 by Lafont de Saint-Yenne and supported by Diderot in 1765 in the article on the Louvre in the "Encylopedie". The idea was accepted by Louis XVI, who in 1789 began work on the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. The Revolution intervened, and on 27 July 1793 the Convention decreed the creation of a