Theft of the Mona Lisa

On this day in 1911 curators at the Louvre discovered that the Mona Lisa had been stolen. Among the suspects were the 32 year-old poet Guillaume Apollinaire and a 29 year-old semi-famous painter named Pablo Picasso. The tale appears on page 109 in A Book of Ages. Picasso appears ten times in the book, Apollinaire once. The painting appears twice, being stolen and being painted by da Vinci when he was 51.

Picasso

Pablo Picasso opened his first gallery exhibition on June 24, 1901 in the Rue Lafitte in Paris. The 19 year-old Spaniard was just entering his Blue Period and still painting in a representational manner. He appears ten times in A Book of Ages. Being a suspect in the theft of the Mona Lisa, painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, marrying a ballerina, having an affair with a shopgirl, suing a biographer, rewriting his will, etc. An interesting life.

Mona Lisa, Gatsby, Theroux

The story about the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa is detailed in the new Vanity Fair, but the most interesting anecdote, involving the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and a young painter named Pablo Picasso, appears on page 109 of A Book of Ages.

Today is author Paul Theroux's birthday; he's 68. He was thirty when he quit teaching to be a writer full time. He also was making enough, finally, to own his own telephone. Page 107, A Book of Ages.

The Great Gatsby was published on April 10, 1925. Fitzgerald wrote much of it the year before while living in France. While there he also took the time to recommend a young writer to his editor at Scribners, a writer he hadn't even met yet named Ernest Hemingway, who was also living in Paris. Fitzgerald is already drinking heavily but not disastrously, as his prose demonstrates, but the novel doesn't sell very well, nor will the next or the one following it, all of which leads Fitz to observe that there are no second acts in American life. F. Scott Fitzgerald appears on pages 69, 89, 103, 148, 153, 161 and 171 in A Book of Ages. There are second acts, by the way, you just have to survive to see them.

Eastwood, Cobain, Picasso

On April 8, 1986 Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel, California. The 56 year-old actor spent more than $40,000 on his campaign. The job only paid $200 a month. Eastwood also appears at ages 24, 34, 41 and 74 in A Book of Ages.

On April 8, 1994 Kurt Cobain was found dead in his home in Seattle. 5000 people attended the memorial service and hear Courtney Love read from his suicide note. He was 27.

When he was 29 Pablo Picasso was arrested, along with his friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa. Both men were soon released. Picasso appears 10 times in A Book of Ages: at age 20, 25, 36, 45, 55, 75, 84, 87 and 88. He died at age 91 on April 8, 1973.