PARIS — A 36-year-old man has been arrested
and placed in psychiatric care after he smeared a glass screen encasing the
Mona Lisa with cake, prosecutors said Monday, in a purported protest against
artists not focusing enough on “the planet”.
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Officials at the
Louvre Museum in Paris, where the
enigmatic portrait holds pride of place, declined to comment on the bizarre
incident on Sunday, which was captured on several phones and circulated widely
on social media.
The treasured work by
Leonardo da Vinci, which has
been the target of vandalism attempts in the past, was unharmed thanks to its
bulletproof glass case.
A Twitter user identified as Lukeee posted a video
showing a museum employee wiping a mess off the glass and another showing a man
dressed in white being escorted away by security guards.
“A man dressed as an old lady jumps out of a
wheelchair and attempted to smash the bulletproof glass of the Mona Lisa. Then
proceeds to smear cake on the glass and throws roses everywhere, all before
being tackled by security,” Lukeee wrote.
Speaking French, the man says: “There are people who
are destroying the Earth... All artists, think about the Earth. That’s why I
did this. Think of the planet.”
No image have emerged showing the actual incident.
An inquiry into “an attempt to vandalize a cultural
work” has been opened, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
The Mona Lisa has been behind glass since a Bolivian
man threw a rock at the painting in December 1956, damaging her left elbow. In
2005, it was placed in a reinforced case that also controls temperature and
humidity.
In 2009, a Russian woman threw an empty teacup at
the painting, which slightly scratched the case.
The Louvre is the largest museum in the world, housing
hundreds of thousands of works that attracted some 10 million visitors a year
before the COVID-19 pandemic.
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