When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in August 1911, the four hooks pictured above were all that remained to admonish its protectors during what would prove a 28 month absence from the famed museum. The whereabouts of the painting seemed as elusive as the mysterious smile of the well-loved La Joconde, the name by which the work is affectionately referred to in France. The rumors swirled as to whom may have been responsible for the theft picking up such well known suspects as Pablo Picasso and the avaricious art collector J. Pierpont Morgan in the net of possibilities.
This week I read one of two recent publications on the subject, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler's The Crimes of Paris (the other being R.A. Scotti's Vanishing Smile), and it is a fascinating read on a number of different levels. Nonfiction so compelling I had to keep reminding myself that it was not fiction. Not even the Hoobler's somewhat leaden prose could detract from the impressively detailed chronicle of the crime as well as the insightful presentation of facts about Belle Epoque Paris. This contextual information was especially interesting to me having just come off reading Proust - really informed my reading of In Search of Lost Time.
Moving pictures, electricity, aviation, telephones, urban railways such as Paris's Metro - all of these things helped define Paris as an epicenter of technology during the Belle Epoque period prior to the first world war. The Hooblers offer an extensive detailing of these facts and a new figuratively and literally illuminated city, but the real strength of The Crimes of Paris emerges in its revelations of the city of light's underworld, both criminal and artistic. It is these two elements through which the dazzling technological advances were to be interpreted.
"There was a growing awareness that artists would have to uncover a deeper reality beneath the everyday appearance of things. Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian playwright living in Paris, wrote, 'There lies a vast ocean of the Unconscious, the unknown source of all that is good, true and beautiful. All that I know, feel, see and will are but bubbles on the surface of this vast sea.' Paris was filled with people floating on that sea, searching."
And this book also reads like a page-turner mystery as we get closer and closer to the recovery of the famous painting. Keeps the pacing brisk.
Want to read it yourself? Hatchette Book Group has been kind enough to offer five copies to those commenting here by end of day tomorrow, Monday. Random draw tomorrow night then.
So today I will jump forward just a bit to Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes in their post-World War I lives in the new Laurie King novel The Language of Bees. Love this series. What are the rest of you in today's Sunday Salon reading?