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Leonardo is born in Vinci, a small village in Italy.
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Leonardo moves to Florence because his paternal grandfather died and enters the shop of Andrea Verrocchio.
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Leonardo paints The Adoration of the Magi, an altarpiece for the Monastery of San Donato at Scopeto, which is to remain unfinished.
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Leonardo travels to Milan and enters the rein of Ludovico Sforza, ruler of the city, presenting himself as engineer, architect, sculptor and painter.
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Leonardo paints the Louvre version of Virgin of the Rocks.
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Leonardo paints Lady with an Ermine
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Leonardo begins work on The Last Supper at the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, which is finished two years later.
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Leonardo begins painting the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, which is finished ten years later.
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Leonardo is appointed military engineer for Cesare Borgia and placed in charge of inspecting Borgia's fortresses in Romagna.
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Leonardo paints the London National Gallery version of Virgin of the Rocks.
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Leonardo is appointed painter and engineer at the court of Louis XII in France.
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Leonardo settles in Rome under the patronage of Giuliano de Medici.
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Leonardo accepts the patronage of Francois I of France and moves into the manor house of Cloux near Amboise. He paints the only known authentic likeness of himself, inscribed by a later hand: "Leonardo da Vinci, portrait of himself as an old man."
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Leonardo dies at the age of sixty-seven at the manor of Cloux near Amboise.
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Francois I displays the Mona Lisa in a semi-public art gallery at Fontainebleau, his favorite chateau.
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Giorgio Vasari publishes the earliest known biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, thirty-one years after Leonardo's death.
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The Mona Lisa is hung in Napoleon Bonapart's bedroom in the Tuileries.
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Vincenzo Perugia is born in Dumenza, a locality in northern Italy near Lake Como.
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Perugia moves to a rooming house at 5 rue de l'Hopital-Saint-Louis in Paris. He works briefly as a carpenter at the Louvre.
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The Director of the National Museums, Théophile Homolle, on vacation when the Mona Lisa disappears, laughs at the possibility of theft from the Louvre: "You might as well pretend that one could steal the towers of Notre Dame!"
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éry Piéret delivers a statue stolen from the Louvre to the offices of the Paris-Journal.
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Paris-Journal prints the story that gets other two stolen statues.
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French detectives make their only arrest in the case -Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire blames Pablo Picasso. Picasso is brought in for questioning and released.
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Paris-Journal reports that Apollinaire was described by La Sureté as "the chief of an international gang that has come to France to rifle our museums."
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Following a report to the French Cabinet, Homolle is forced to quit being a museum director.
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The still-missing Mona Lisa is honored in a Lent parade in Paris with a float showing Mona Lisa taking off in an airplane.
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Florentine antique dealer, Alfredo Geri, prepares an exhibition and places an ad in several Italian newspapers stating that he is "a buyer at good prices of art objects of every sort."
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Geri receives a letter with a Paris postmark in response to ad, from a man called "Leonardo Vincenzo," who says he has the Mona Lisa and wants to restore the painting to Italy.
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Vencenzo Perugia (a.k.a. Leonardo Vincenzo) arrives at Geri's shop in Florence
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Geri and Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi, meet Perugia in his hotel room. Perugia gets the Mona lisa from a fake floor case. Perugia is immediately arrested.
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The Mona Lisa is displayed at Uffizi, then is sent on a tour of the museums of Italy before being sent back to France.
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Mona Lisa returns to Paris in a special compartment by train.
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Mona Lisa is returned to her new place in the Louvre
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Perugia is placed on trial in Florence, where he gains popularity as a hero for returning Mona Lisa. He is given a tiny sentence and released almost immediately.
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Mona Lisa visits the United States for seven weeks -first at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and then at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is seen by one million six-hundred-thousand visitors.
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Mona Lisa travels to the Tokyo National Museum and then to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, where she is seen by more than 2 million viewers.