Attack on the most famous smile in the world: On Sunday afternoon in the Louvre in Paris, a man with a wig suddenly got out of a wheelchair and threw a cake at the “Mona Lisa”. He wants his sensational action to be understood as a wake-up call.
A man threw a cake at the “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre in Paris, but thanks to protective glass, the legendary painting by Leonardo da Vinci remained undamaged. The museum management said on request that they did not want to comment on the incident from the previous day.
A Twitter user wrote that while viewing the Mona Lisa on Sunday afternoon, a man in a wig got out of a wheelchair and threw a cream cake at the picture. Photos posted to Twitter and Instagram showed a man, apparently a warden at the Louvre, removing the cream from the painting’s protective pane. A photo or video of the actual cake throw did not initially appear on the Internet.
In a video shared by the Twitter user, the man dressed in white can be seen standing next to his wheelchair and being taken away by museum security personnel. Apparently the man wanted his sensational action to be understood as a call for environmental protection. “There are people who are destroying the earth,” he said in French in the video. “All artists, think of the earth. That’s why I made this. Think of the planet.”
In December 1956, a Bolivian threw a stone at the “Mona Lisa”, damaging the left side of the painting. As a consequence, the more than 500-year-old picture was protected with safety glass. In 2005, the protective measures for the “Mona Lisa” were increased again. Since then, the picture has been behind bulletproof glass in a transparent box that ensures ideal temperature and humidity. Every year the painting attracts millions of visitors from all over the world.
