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“Think of the earth, people are destroying the earth,” said a man wearing a wig as he was led away from the Louvre.
The Mona Lisa was attacked but unharmed when a visitor to the Louvre Museum in Paris attempted to smash the glass protecting the world’s most famous painting before smearing a cake on its surface in an apparent environmental publicity stunt.
Videos posted on social media show a young man wearing a wig and red lipstick arriving in a wheelchair. The man, whose identity has not been known, was seen throwing flowers at the museum’s exhibit.
Then the offender, disguised as an old lady, jumped out of the wheelchair before assaulting the bulletproof glass.
The cake attack left an obvious creamy white tinge but the famous work of Leonardo da Vinci was unaffected.
“Maybe it was just crazy to me,” a post-accident videographer posted, showing a Louvre employee cleaning the glass. “[He] Then he proceeds to smear the cake on the glass, throwing flowers all over the place before security confronts him.”
Officials at the Louvre Museum in Paris declined to comment on Monday about the bizarre incident that occurred the previous day.
Maybe this was just crazy to me, but a guy dressed as an old lady jumps out of a wheelchair and tries to smash the bulletproof glass of the Mona Lisa. He then proceeds to smear the cake on the glass, throwing flowers all over the place before being dealt with by security. 😂??? pic.twitter.com/OFXdx9eWcM
– Lukeee🧃 (@lukeXC2002) May 29 2022
Another video posted to Twitter showed the same employee finishing cleaning the painting while another host removes a wheelchair from in front of the da Vinci masterpiece.
“Think of the earth, people are destroying the earth,” the man said in French in another video that showed him being led by security from the Paris fair. “Think about it. Artists tell you: Think of the Earth. That’s why I did this.”
This 16th century Renaissance masterpiece has been targeted before. The painting was stolen in 1911 by a museum employee, an event that increased its worldwide fame.
The Mona Lisa has been behind glass since a Bolivian man threw a stone at the painting in December 1956, damaging her left elbow. In 2005, it was enclosed in a hardened case that also controlled temperature and humidity.
In 2009, a Russian woman angry at her inability to obtain French citizenship threw an empty teacup at the plate, slightly scratching the cover.
The Louvre is the largest museum in the world, housing hundreds of thousands of works that attracted around 10 million visitors a year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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