15 years after starting the painting, he was still working on this painting, trying to modify it and make it better. Meanwhile, in the year 1519, Leonardo da Vinci passed away during his stay in the French palace. And the king kept this painting as a part of his Royal Collection.
About 150 years, in 1797, when the French Revolution happened, this painting was taken out of the palace and handed over to the Louvre Museum. The interesting thing is that this is the reason why the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911. We had mention about this at the beginning.
The mastermind of this theft was Vincenzo Peruggia. He stole this painting together with his two friends. He was an Italian Nationalist. He believed that this painting belonged to Italy. Not in France. And so after stealing it, they took it to Italy. Stealing such a famous painting was a risky job especially when the value of the painting was in millions of dollars. So, obviously, Vincenzo wouldn’t have felt safe after this theft.
