Author: Phil Philips
The Mona Lisa’s Secret is Book 1 in the Joey Perrugia book series by Phil Philips. Joey Perrugia is the main protagonist of the series. A great-grandson of Vincenzo Perrugia, the Italian who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. The painting was considered to be returned and the Louvre’s ownership restored, but this book presents a plot where that did not happen because Joey discovers the original painting in a secret room in his house. The story then quickly develops into a fast-moving historical mystery involving art, theft, deception, and the question of who can be trusted.
The historical connection is particularly clever because the real theft of the Mona Lisa contributed enormously to the painting’s fame. Before 1911, it was certainly an important Leonardo. After the theft, it became a celebrity. Newspapers reported the story, crowds came to the Louvre simply to look at the empty space where the painting had hung, and its eventual recovery generated even more publicity.
In that sense, Mona Lisa’s Secret plays with something rather interesting: cultural value as produced by the stories we tell about it, not just by objects. The Mona Lisa has accumulated an extraordinary number of stories—about Leonardo, her identity, her smile, her theft, her authenticity and her secrets. Philips simply adds another, and this is why the novel’s premise works so well: the possibility that the painting everyone travels to Paris to see might not be quite what we think it is taps into a much larger fascination with heritage and authenticity.
We want cultural objects to have histories, but we also want those histories to contain secrets. Sometimes, the mystery surrounding an object becomes part of its value.
Thank you for reading!