Two protestors threw canned soup onto the priceless Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in Paris on Sunday. (Photo by David CANTINIAUX / AFPTV / AFP) (Photo by DAVID CANTINIAUX/AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images)
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was attacked by two protestors who threw canned soup onto the priceless painting at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France on Sunday.
Video footage which has since gone viral, shows two women throwing what looked like red tomato soup at the iconic painting before crossing the wooden barrier protecting it from crowds.
One of the women then removes her jacket to reveal a T-shirt reading “Riposte Alimentaire” (translated in English as “Food Response”), a food sustainability activist group in France.
The second woman also joins in by shouting a message to the crowd:
“What is more important: Art or healthy sustainable food? Our farming system is sick. Our farmers are dying at work.”
The Louvre employees could then be seen putting black panels in front of the Mona Lisa and asking visitors to evacuate the room.
ALSO READ: WATCH: Man placed in psychiatric care after attacking Mona Lisa with cake
The Mona Lisa, which is located in the Salle des Etats (Room of the States), is protected behind a glass panel.
The 16th-century painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci was therefore fortunately not damaged.
On its website, the “Food Riposte” group said the French government is breaking its climate commitments and called for the equivalent of France’s state-sponsored healthcare system to be put in place to give people better access to healthy food while providing farmers with a decent income, reported Al Jazeera.
This is not the first time, the Mona Lisa has been “attacked”.
In May 2022, a 36-year-old man entered the Louvre Museum in a wheelchair, disguised as an old woman wearing a wig and lipstick.
According to X user Lukeee who was at the museum at the time when the bizarre incident occurred, said “the old lady” jumped out of the wheelchair and tried to smash the bulletproof glass protecting the famous painting.
“She” then smeared cake on the glass and scattered red roses everywhere before security intervened.
While being escorted from the museum with his wheelchair, the man told onlookers: “Think about Earth, the planet, some people are just destroying the planet. Think about this…every artist cares about the planet, this is why I did that.”
The famous artwork has been behind glass since a Bolivian man threw a rock at it in December 1956, damaging her left elbow.
In 2005, it was placed in a reinforced case which also controls temperature and humidity.
In 2009, a Russian woman threw an empty teacup at the painting, which slightly scratched the case.
ALSO READ: Leonardo’s ‘quick eye’ may be key to Mona Lisa’s magnetism
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