The hiding place was his apartment on the rue de l’Hôpital Saint-Louis — a street in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, a short walk from the Louvre in the direction that made the daily reality of his life and his crime exist in uncomfortably close proximity. He concealed the painting in a trunk that had a false bottom. The painting rested there for approximately twenty-eight months.
This period of concealment tells something about Peruggia’s situation and his planning. If his primary motive had been financial gain — selling the painting for a large sum — he was in an impossible position. The Mona Lisa was the most famous stolen object in the world. Its image had been on the front pages of newspapers in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, and across Europe. Any potential buyer would know immediately what they were being offered. Any sale would be traceable. Any approach to a dealer or collector would risk immediate exposure.
The practical impossibility of selling the painting while the investigation was active appears to have kept Peruggia in place. He made at least one early attempt to identify a potential buyer in London, approaching the art dealer Joseph Duveen, who reportedly responded with laughter — an anecdote that appears in multiple accounts as evidence that any attempt to sell through legitimate channels was hopeless from the start. The story of the London approach and Duveen’s response, while widely repeated, appears in accounts based on recollections rather than contemporary documentation, and should be treated with appropriate source-attribution caution.