#22 Mona Lisa — Coaster

On a Monday morning in August 1911 a Louvre workman named Vincenzo Peruggia lifted her off the wall, carried her down a back staircase under his smock and walked out. For two years the museum left the four iron pegs bare, and more people queued to look at the empty space than had ever come to see the painting. Peruggia was caught in Florence in 1913, trying to sell her to the Uffizi. She had hung quietly for four centuries. The theft made her the most recognised face on earth. Musée du Louvre, Paris.