In a recent interview with Frank DiLella, Andrew Lloyd Webber teased a new project: a musical about the theft of the Mona Lisa. Webber revealed that he’s planning to begin working on the musical soon, which is based on a true story.

A Musical Inspired by a Painting

The musical will be a retelling of the true story that began on August 21, 1911, when the iconic painting was stolen from the Louvre by three Italian handymen: two brothers, Vincenzo and Michele Lancelotti, and the leader, Vincenzo Perugia. Perugia worked for the Louvre and installed the same protective glass cases he later ripped from the “Mona Lisa.”

Peruggia was an Italian patriot who believed that the painting should have been returned to an Italian museum. The three men reportedly spent all night hiding in a closet and in the morning, before the museum opened, they removed the painting from its case and frame, covered it in a blanket, and boarded a train out of the city.

Since the painting was too notorious once the theft was announced, Peruggia stored it in the false bottom of a trunk in a Paris boardinghouse for 28 months. The painting was reportedly recovered when the thief tried to sell it to Alfredo Geri, an antiques dealer in Florence.

Researchers believe that the enigmatic and mysterious portrait of the smiling woman by Leonardo da Vinci is Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant.

“The other [musical] I’m working on is the true story of the theft of the Mona Lisa. It’s a true story about how the Mona Lisa disappeared for three years and ended up in Italy. More than that I cannot really tell you for the simple reason that I’m going away next week to write it,” Lloyd Webber told the UK theatre news site The Stage.

Webber is known for many long-running musicals, such as The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Evita, Sunset Boulevard, School of Rock, and more.