PARIS, May 30 (Reuters) – The Mona Lisa was left shaken but unharmed on Sunday when a visitor to the Louvre tried to smash the glass protecting the world’s most famous painting before smearing cream across its surface in an apparent climate-related publicity stunt.
The perpetrator was a man disguised as an old lady who jumped out of a wheelchair before attacking the glass.
“Maybe this is just nuts to me…,” posted the author of a video of the incident’s aftermath that shows a Louvre staffer cleaning the glass. “(He) then proceeds to smear cake on the glass, and throws roses everywhere before being tackled by security.”
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The Louvre was not immediately available for comment.
Another video posted on social media showed the same staffer finishing cleaning the pane while another attendant removes a wheelchair from in front of the Da Vinci masterpiece.
“Think of the earth, people are destroying the earth”, the man, dressed in a wig, said in French in another video posting that showed him being led away from the Paris gallery with the wheelchair, indicating that the incident likely had an environmentalist motive.
(https://twitter.com/klevisl007/status/1530997381545738243
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Reporting by Tassilo Hummel; editing by John Stonestreet
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