Musicals supremo Andrew Lloyd Webber is shifting his focus to the most famous painting in the world—Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa housed at the Louvre. Lloyd Webber is known for blockbuster musical hits such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats and Phantom of the Opera. But now his interest is piqued by one of the most audacious heists in art history which took place in 1911 when Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre employee, stole the venerated painting, only for it to be recovered around three years later when the dastardly thief tried to sell it to an antiques dealer in Florence called Alfredo Geri.
“The other [musical] I’m working on is the true story of the theft of the Mona Lisa. It’s a true story about how the Mona Lisa disappeared for three years and ended up in Italy. More than that I cannot really tell you for the simple reason that I’m going away next week to write it,” Lloyd Webber told the UK theatre news site The Stage. The enigmatic portrait of a smiling woman is widely believed to be Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant.
