People were left stunned at Paris' famous Louvre Museum as an "disabled old woman" jumped out of her wheelchair to smear cake over the famous Mona Lisa painting.
Marca reported that a man disguised as an elderly woman in a wheelchair jumped up and threw cake on the iconic painting, shocking onlookers.
He reportedly attempted to break through the bulletproof glass that protects Leonardo da Vinci's work in the Louvre Museum.
Can anybody translate what ole dude was saying as they where escorting him out?😂 pic.twitter.com/Uy2taZ4ZMm
— Lukeee🧃 (@lukeXC2002) May 29, 2022
According to eyewitnesses, the perpetrator was a man in a wheelchair who wore a wig. He suddenly stood up and approached the painting.
At first, he tried to destroy the display case. When that didn't work, he threw the cake onto the canvas and spread it over the glass panel.
He also sprinkled roses before he was knocked to the ground by security.
The video shows the cake smeared across the glass the Mona Lisa sits behind.
It also shows the perpetrator addressing the visitors in French as he is taken by security.
Citing a Spanish media outlet, Pledge Times reported that among other things, the man shouted: “some people are trying to destroy the earth, think of the earth!”
Eyewitnesses said that the man disguised himself as an old lady and rode through the museum in a wheelchair before committing the attack. It is still not clear what the man's motive was behind and how he smuggled the cake into the museum.
Meanwhile, it is to mention that this is not the first time the Mona Lisa has been targeted by vandals.
According to Ladbible, in 1956, the lower part of the masterpiece was severely damaged when a vandal doused the painting with acid. Due to this incident, the Mona Lisa was kept behind bulletproof glass.
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci.
Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world".
The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.
The painting is probably of the Italian noblewoman Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo.
It is painted in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. Leonardo never gave the painting to the Giocondo family, and later it is believed he left it in his will to his favored apprentice Salaì.
It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517.
It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic. It has been on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris since 1797.
The Mona Lisa is one of the most valuable paintings in the world. It holds the Guinness World Record for the highest known painting insurance valuation in history at US$100 million in 1962 (equivalent to $870 million in 2021).
Today the Mona Lisa is considered the most famous painting in the world, a destination painting, but until the 20th century it was simply one among many highly regarded artworks.
Once part of King Francis I of France's collection, the Mona Lisa was among the first artworks to be exhibited in the Louvre, which became a national museum after the French Revolution.
Leonardo began to be revered as a genius, and the painting's popularity grew in the mid-19th century when French intelligentsia praised it as mysterious and a representation of the femme fatale.
The Baedeker guide in 1878 called it "the most celebrated work of Leonardo in the Louvre",but the painting was known more by the intelligentsia than the general public.
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