A 36-year-old man was arrested and placed in psychiatric care after allegedly smearing cake on a glass screen encasing the Mona Lisa in a protest against artists not focusing enough on "the planet." Officials at the Louvre Museum in Paris, where the enigmatic portrait is housed, declined to comment on the bizarre incident on Sunday, which was captured on multiple phones and widely shared on social media. The bulletproof glass case saved Leonardo da Vinci's work, which had previously been the target of vandalism attempts.
An Instagram user going by the handles steffan shared a video of a museum employee wiping a mess off the glass and another of a man dressed in white being escorted away by security guards. A man dressed as an elderly lady leaps from a wheelchair and attempts to smash the Mona Lisa's bulletproof glass. Then smears cake on the glass and throws roses everywhere before being tackled by security. The man in the video says in French, "There are people who are destroying the Earth... Consider the Earth, all artists. That is why I did it. Consider the environment."
There have been no images of the actual incident released. According to the Paris prosecutor's office, an investigation into attempted vandalism of cultural work has been opened. Since a Bolivian man threw a rock at the painting in December 1956, damaging her left elbow, the Mona Lisa has been protected behind glass. It was placed in a reinforced case in 2005, which also controls temperature and humidity. In 2009, a Russian woman threw an empty teacup at the painting, scratching it slightly.
The Louvre is the world's largest museum, housing hundreds of thousands of works and attracting approximately 10 million visitors per year prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Selena Mattei
