The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity

At 15, Lisa Gherardini had at most six years to marry or be sent to a convent. In Florence, dowry costs were rapidly increasing, leaving even wealthy families scrambling. Middle- and upper-class Renaissance women did not work. Their dowries supported them and signaled their respectability. No one married without providing or demanding a dowry. Florentine convents overflowed with dowry-less girls.

Gherardini was born in a time of bloodshed and revolution. Her parents, Lucrezia del Caccia and Florentine nobleman Antonmaria di Noldo Gherardini lived off rents and products provided by peasants who maintained their land.

In 1478, the year of Lisa’s birth, rival Florentine families, principal among them the Pazzis, staged a coup again the ruling Medici family, with the support of Pope Sixtus IV. Rather than revolt, the people of Florence stood behind the Medicis. Brutal reprisals followed against the Pazzis.

The outraged Pope banned mass and Holy Communion in Florence, appropriated “all Medici money and property in Rome” (122), and marched on Florence with Naples, burning down everything they passed, including the property of Antonmaria.

A problem with the “Consummate Professional” theory about the thief was that it would be impossible to sell a painting “so obviously stolen” (127).