On the evening of Sunday, August 21, 1911, three men disguised as maintenance workers broke into the Louvre museum in Paris, removed a certain painting from its glass case and frame, then hid out for the remainder of the night. The next morning, they walked out of the museum with the Mona Lisa wrapped in a blanket. During the 28 months that the Mona Lisa lay hidden in the bottom of a trunk in a boarding house, more people went to see the empty spot where it used to hang than ever went to see the portrait itself. It became an icon precisely because it was missing.
