norville’s framed Mona Lisa, a stenciled portrait in a gold bamboo frame, hanging on a white cinder-block wall next to a red brick building

Thank you for
stealing the
Mona Lisa

An empty cinder-block wall where a Mona Lisa hung the day before, with a spray-painted corner mark left behind

Collaboration

You finished it.

If you’re holding one of these, you took a framed Mona Lisa off a wall somewhere. It was hung there to be stolen, and the piece was only half done until you did. That makes you a collaborator, and the work is credited to both of us.

If you’re just visiting, that’s the project in short. I make the Mona Lisas and hang them up, and whoever steals one finishes it. Marcel Duchamp argued in 1957 that a viewer completes a work of art by looking at it. This one asks the viewer to take it home. More on Duchamp and the Creative Act.

We’ll probably never meet, so the thief’s name on the label stays blank, which seems right. If it’s you, hang it up or give it away. It’s yours now.

norville

You and norville

Untitled (L.H.O.O.Q.), 2026

Spray paint on found board, thrifted frame, theft

Acquired by theft. Private collection.

The Concept

norville’s Mona Lisa: a stenciled portrait of a woman in glasses with her hair pinned back, MONA above her and LISA below, in a gold bamboo-style frame

Ever notice that whenever there’s a heist to steal a painting, it’s always the Mona Lisa? The idea was to bring the rush you get from stealing a priceless artwork to the people.

I make Mona Lisas and hang them in public but secluded spots. Each one just sits on a hook on the wall with nothing protecting it, until someone steals it and leaves a shadow where it hung. And voilà, you stole the Mona Lisa!

Once it’s stolen, the piece is complete.

Mona Lisa as an idea

The Mona Lisa is not just a painting. It’s an idea. It started in August 1911, when someone carried it out of the Louvre.

Most people who know her face have never stood in front of the painting. They know her from copies, and the copies started piling up after 1911.

Original

Leonardo da Vinci started the portrait in Florence around 1503. The sitter was most likely Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, which is why Italians call it La Gioconda. Leonardo kept working on it for years and never handed it over. It went with him to France, ended up in the royal collection and, after the Revolution, in the Louvre.

For a long time it was just a respected Leonardo in the Salon Carré. Critics liked it. Most visitors walked right past.

Mona Lisa, LouvreLeonardo da Vinci, c. 1503–1519, as it hangs today
The Mona Lisa in its gilt frame on a dark wall at the Louvre

Theft

On a Monday morning in August 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia, a handyman who had helped put in the museum’s protective glass, came out of a storeroom where he’d spent the night, lifted the panel off its hooks, slipped it under his smock and walked out. Nobody noticed for most of the day. The guards figured it was off being photographed.

Vincenzo PeruggiaParis police identification photographs from an earlier arrest, dated January 1909. His prints were on file when the frame was found, and nobody matched them.
Vincenzo Peruggia’s police identification photographs, profile and front view, signed Peruggia and dated 25.1.09
The empty wall in the Salon Carré after the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911, four bare hooks between two framed paintings
The Salon Carré, LouvreAugust 1911, after the theft

The museum closed for a week. When it reopened, people lined up to look at four iron hooks. Kafka and Max Brod were in Paris that fall and went to see the gap. The face was on front pages for weeks; Apollinaire spent a few days in jail on suspicion, and Picasso was brought in for questioning. For two years the painting was only reproductions and rumor, and somewhere in there it became the most recognized picture in the world. Peruggia had it the whole time, in a trunk in his room in Paris. In December 1913 he took it to Florence and offered it to an art dealer, Alfredo Geri, who called the police. The painting came home with a story attached, and that story is a large part of why people still line up to see it.

Vincenzo Peruggia holding the Mona Lisa in front of the empty wall in the Salon Carré
Peruggia with the Mona LisaA later photomontage, set against the empty wall in the Salon Carré

In art, music and movies

Pop art

Once she was the most famous face in the world, artists started borrowing her.

Music

In 1950 Nat King Cole recorded “Mona Lisa,” a ballad by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans written for the film Captain Carey, U.S.A. It went to number one and won the Oscar for best original song.

Books and movies

The cover of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, with the Mona Lisa’s eyes showing through a torn red cover
The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, 2003

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code turned her into a puzzle. The book opens with a murder in the Louvre, and one of the first clues is written on the glass in front of the Mona Lisa. It sold tens of millions of copies, and the movie followed in 2006.

Movies keep coming back to her too, usually as the thing in the heist.

  • Poster for The Theft of the Mona Lisa (1931)

    The Theft of the Mona Lisa, 1931

    Peruggia’s side of the 1911 job, filmed twenty years later.

  • Poster for The Da Vinci Code (2006)

    The Da Vinci Code, 2006

    Tom Hanks follows a clue written on the glass in front of her.

  • Poster for Glass Onion (2022)

    Glass Onion, 2022

    A tech billionaire borrows her for his private island, and she gets destroyed.

  • Poster for Masterplan (2026)

    Masterplan, 2026

    Stanley Tucci plays an old thief planning one more job on the Louvre.

The New Monas

Why not just reproduce Leonardo’s?

Leonardo painted one woman, Lisa Gherardini, and for five hundred years hers is the face everyone copies. Duchamp gave her a mustache and Banksy handed her a rocket launcher, and her face stayed the same.

Mine keep the name and the gold frame and swap out the woman. Each design is a different woman, and each one gets a number. The one you have is one of them.

Yours has a certificate of authenticity attached to the back. Keep it with the piece, and please don’t post it online.

Register your MonaRegistration opens soon.

See the prototype and Series One →

L.H.O.O.Q.

Close-up of the bottom rail of a gold frame, with L.H.O.O.Q. hand-lettered in black marker under the stenciled word LISA
On the bottom rail of every frame, yours included.

The letters are a joke you only get by saying them out loud. Read them one at a time in French and you’re saying the letter names: elle, ache, o, o, cu. Say them fast and they run together into a sentence.

L
elle
el
Elle
H
ache
ahsh
a ch‑
O
o
oh
‑aud
O
o
oh
au
Q
cu
kew, lips rounded
cul.

Word by word:

elle
she
a
has
chaud
hot
au
at the, in the
cul
ass

Literally it’s “she has a hot ass,” and it’s slang for being turned on. Cul is the vulgar word, nearer to arse than to bottom.

So Duchamp put a mustache on the most respected woman in painting and captioned her with a dirty joke that stays hidden until somebody reads it aloud. The frames use the same trick. Now you know what yours says.

Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q.Rectified readymade, 1919. This version is annotated April 1942, with the mustache credited to Picabia and the goatee to Duchamp.
Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q.: a postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a drawn mustache, the letters LHOOQ on a strip below, and handwritten inscriptions

FAQ

Did I just steal a painting?

Technically, you finished one. Taking it off the wall is part of the work, so it wasn’t complete until it left with you.

Am I in trouble?

Not in the least, thank you so much!! It was hung there to be taken, and you took it. That was the arrangement all along.

Is it really mine now?

It is. Hang it somewhere with decent light and keep the certificate with it. If you’d rather pass it on, give it to someone who’ll appreciate the backstory.

Why the Mona Lisa?

Every heist movie goes after her, and the art world has been arguing about copies of her since Duchamp drew the mustache in 1919. She came with a hundred years of context already attached.

Who is the woman in mine?

Each design is a different woman, on purpose. The New Monas has the longer explanation, if you want it.

What does L.H.O.O.Q. on the frame mean?

It’s a nod to Duchamp. Read the letters out loud in French and you’ll get the joke, which is a little rude. The L.H.O.O.Q. section has the translation.

Where will the next one go?

Somewhere public and quiet, probably in Lake Oswego. I don’t announce locations ahead of time. It would take the fun out of finding one.

What happens to the spot where it hung?

It gets photographed with the empty nail still in the wall. The absence gets documented as carefully as the painting did.

Can I post about it?

Please do. With stolen art, knowing where a piece ended up is half the story. Just keep the certificate out of the photo.

About

norville makes Art in Lake Oswego, Oregon. But not in the lake.

He is in search of a creative life. Failing at everything else, he’s driven to street art. Most of it starts from the same habit: to understand a thing, he makes it again. He separates what a work is trying to do from the object itself, then rebuilds the object until the intent shows. Most days he makes music.

Other projects

  • Project WildflowerWhere norville works.
  • C.A.T.S.S.Circular Aerial Temporary Sculpture Society. Smoke rings fired from homemade vortex cannons, from a coffee can up to a 55-gallon drum.
  • One Two TreeA tree identification guide for the Pacific Northwest.