By chance, I stayed in the hotel, once called Hotel Rive Gauche, now da Vinci, where Vincenzo Peruggia, the man who stole the Mona Lisa, apparently stayed after he had removed it, wrapped up in his worker’s smock, on Monday 21st August 1911. He was in Room 603, on the roof, so that he could escape if need be, but instead he headed back to Italy to try and sell the painting, before being caught two years later in Florence offering it for sale. In an odd way, he, more than any art historian, is responsible for Leonardo’s fame.