premise: On a mundane morning in late summer in Paris, the impossible happened. The Mona Lisa vanished. On Sunday evening, August 20, 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's best-known painting was hanging in her usual place on the wall of the Salon Carré, between Correggio's Mystical Marriage and Titian's Allegory of Alfonso d'Avalos. On Tuesday morning, when the Louvre reopened to the public, she was gone. Within hours of the discovery of the empty frame, stashed behind a radiator, the story broke in an extra edition of Le Temps, the leading morning newspaper. Incredulous reporters from local papers and international news services converged on the museum. Georges Bénédite, the acting director, and his curators were speculating freely to the press.
hypothesis: Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.