MONA LISA

On August 21, 1911, a man left the Louvre carrying under his coat a small wooden panel painted four centuries earlier by a certain Leonardo da Vinci. The alarm did not sound for twenty-four hours. For two years, Mona Lisa remained missing, and it was precisely this absence that sealed its legend: before the theft, it was an important painting among others; afterward, it became the most famous painting in the world. By making it disappear, the thief rendered it immortal.

I wanted to recount this historic theft not as a grave crime, but as an elegant and lively treasure hunt in the spirit of classic heist films: cunning rather than brute force, lightness rather than drama, a veneer of fantasy over an irreversible act. The five instruments of the wind quintet interact like accomplices passing the painting from hand to hand, each in turn pursuer and pursued, in a score that advances on tiptoe before spiraling into motion until the final arrest.