PARIS, May 30. /TASS/. A young environmental activist has thrown a cake at Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci's painting Gioconda (Mona Lisa) on display in the Louvre in Paris, the BFM TV channel reported on Monday.
According to it, the incident took place on Sunday. The video footage posted on Twitter shows a young man throwing a piece of cake and smearing it on the armored glass that protects one of the world's most famous artworks. He was able to get as close as possible by disguising himself as a disabled woman; there is a special passageway in front of the painting for wheelchair users, which is closer than the corridor for regular visitors.
"Think about the Earth. There are people who are destroying the Earth. Think about that. Artists tell you, 'Think of the Earth.' All artists, think of the Earth. That's why I did this. Think about the planet," he said in one of the videos, which shows him rolling a wheelchair accompanied by museum security.
The Louvre itself has not yet released any statement about the incident. According to the TV channel, employees of the Louvre washed armored glass, the painting was not damaged. The armored glass was installed due to numerous attempts on the Gioconda in the past: in 2009, a tourist threw a cup of tea at the picture, breaking the ordinary glass that was there at the time. In 1974, when the work of Da Vinci was exhibited at the Tokyo National Museum, it was sprayed with paint, but the Mona Lisa was restored. Prior to that, in 1956, there were two other attacks: in one case a man doused it with acid, damaging the lower part of the canvas, and in the second, an artist from Bolivia threw a stone at it, causing light damage.
In 1911, the painting was stolen by an Italian museum worker, Vincenzo Peruggia. He hid it in his apartment. The Mona Lisa was found two years later, when Perugia tried to sell the work to the famous Uffizi Gallery in Florence.