ZEE PLANE, ZEE PLANE

Here is a postcard I got on ebay of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel by the Louvre. It's from around 1912. I liked it because of the plane in the upper right. I turned it over to a Mac McAlpin, a friend of mine who's a video graphics genius and take a look at what he did.

DONGLE ON MY DOORSTEP

Got home from work Monday to find a new dongle for my Avid system. Plugged it in, turned on the computer and, my god, it worked. When does that happen anymore: Something someone sends you is actually right? Justine's in Philly this week so I've had lots of evening time to screen footage and pull the best clips. By the end of the month, that work will be done and I can happily move onto making sense of it all. If I don't bust another dongle.

SUFFERING FROM A BROKEN DONGLE

OK, it's not what it sounds like. A dongle is a little USB fob that I need to have plugged into my computer to make my Avid editing system work. Well, the other day, I moved my desk chair, it hit the dongle sticking out of the front of my Mac tower and broke it. Thus no editing. Avid is sending me a new one. It should be here tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm going over the thousand or so documents from the archives that I have and I have found a few interesting things... that's all I can say.

NEW MONA LISA BOOK

THE VANISHED SMILE by r.a. scotti

I learned last summer that an author named Rita Scotti was writing a book about the theft. It's coming out next month. It's called The Vanished Smile. I have an advanced copy that I got from amazon. Just started it. Looks like there's a lot of detail.

Click on the title of this entry for more info.

The painter who noticed the painting was gone

Louis Beroud was a fairly well-known artist who did paintings in and about the Louvre. On August 22, 1911, he went to the Louvre to paint the Mona Lisa on the wall of the Salon Carre and saw that it was not there. He asked a passing guard where it was. The guard shrugged and said "Probably being photographed." Several hours later when La Joconde had not been returned, Beroud saw the guard again and asked when the masterpiece was going to be returned. The guard was concerned that the Mona Lisa had not been rehung. He immediately went off to the photo studio to see. He came back very agitated: the photographers did not have her and hadn't seen her. She was missing.

This painting is dated 1911. I'm not certain but it may be the painting that Beroud was working on when La Joconde was stolen. (Courtesy of Eileen White)

CLICK HERE FOR A BLOG ABOUT OUR FILM

Justine stumbled on this blog yesterday about our film. How the writer found out about us, we don't know

OUR LATEST ACQUISITION

Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa on August 21, 1911. He had it until December 11, 1913 when he brought it to Florence. For the next three weeks, the Mona Lisa was displayed in Florence, Rome and Milan before being put on a train and arriving back in France on December 31, 1913. This postcard is from that time and commemorates its return to Paris. We got this on line from a French postcard seller. According to google translate the caption meansi, it means "Leonardo bringing his Joconde"