Attack in the Louvre in Paris, on the Mona Lisa painting

She probably wouldn’t have smiled at that: An unknown person threw a cake on the “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre in Paris. The legendary painting remained undamaged thanks to the protective glass.

Paris, Louvre: remains of a smeared cake on the protective glass of the painting “Mona Llisa”
Remnants of a smudged cake on the protective glass of the painting “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre in Paris.
Attack on the most famous smile in the world: An unknown person 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 informed the AFP news agency on Monday that they did not want to comment on the incident from the previous day.

Twitter user: Attacker disguised as “old woman”.
The cake attack by a disguised man had previously been reported in online networks. A Twitter user named Lukeee wrote that while visiting the Mona Lisa on Sunday afternoon, a man wearing a woman’s wig got out of a wheelchair.

The attacker was disguised as an “old woman” and first tried to smash the glass case in which the “Mona Lisa” is located. After that he “smeared cake on the glass and threw roses everywhere before he was grabbed by the security guards”.

Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in Paris, taken on October 15, 2018
The “Mona Lisa” attracts millions of visitors from all over the world every year. The Louvre in Paris is the largest museum in the world and houses hundreds of thousands of works of art.
Source: imago stock&people
Cream on a protective pane – call for environmental protection?
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 posted by Twitter user Lukeee, a young man dressed in white can be seen standing next to his wheelchair and being escorted away by museum security personnel. Apparently he 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. So he went on to say:

All artists, think of the earth. That’s why I did it. Think of the planet.
The Parisian street artist Jef Aérosol wears his hat and puts his index finger in front of his mouth.

Street Art in Paris – “Without use and yet indispensable”
Art in Paris is more than the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. On the side streets of the city, artists such as Jef Aérosol, Obey and Banksy use the walls of buildings as canvases.

“Mona Lisa” has been repeatedly targeted
The “Mona Lisa” was stolen by a museum employee in 1911 and damaged in an acid attack in the 1950s. In December 1956, a Bolivian threw a stone at the “Mona Lisa”, damaging the painting at the level of the Mona Lisa’s left elbow. 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.

In 2009, a Russian woman who had been denied French citizenship threw a ceramic mug at the Mona Lisa, but did not damage the glass or the painting.