The “Mona Lisa” is protected by bulletproof glass, and yesterday we found out that it’s properly shielded against cake, too.
A man who disguised himself as an elderly woman in a wheelchair smeared cake on the iconic painting’s glass case at the Louvre yesterday in what appeared to be a climate protest. As the man was being escorted away by security, he told about 100 onlookers, in French, “Think about the Earth. There are people who are destroying the Earth…this is why I did this,” videos posted on social media showed.
Good news is that Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, probably the most recognizable painting in the world, was not damaged by the caking.
Big picture: Something about the “Mona Lisa” gets people riled up, and yesterday’s attack was not the first time the portrait’s been messed with…
It was stolen by three Italian handymen in 1911, which actually helped boost its status.
A visitor threw a stone at the Mona Lisa in 1956, which caused a chip of paint to fall off. “I had a stone in my pocket and suddenly the idea to throw it came to my mind,” he said, according to police.
In 2009, a woman hurled a ceramic cup at it, but it shattered upon contact with the glass casing.
It was a bad weekend to be an iconic piece of art. A $2 million, solid-gold tabernacle at Brooklyn’s St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church was apparently stolen, and the altar on which it stood was vandalized.
