Two climate activists threw soup at the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s famed Mona Lisa painting in Paris on Sunday morning, demanding the government promote “the right to healthy and sustainable food”.
In the latest assault on famed pieces of art for the purpose of a political stunt, two members of the “Riposte Alimentaire” (Food Response) managed to sneak cans of butternut squash soup into the Louvre Museum in Paris and hurled them onto the most famous painting in the world.
Fortunately, the Mona Lisa painting was covered with armoured glass, and therefore was apparently not damaged by the political stunt.
The green activists said that their actions were meant to “kick-off a campaign of civil resistance, which carries a clear demand, beneficial to all: social security for sustainable food.”
“What’s more important?” Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food? Our agricultural system is sick! The farmers are sick,” a woman shouted after throwing the soup at the Mona Lisa according to Le Parisien.
Following the incident, the museum was evacuated and a cleaning crew was dispatched to the Salle des Estates room in which the painting is housed.
The famed painting from da Vinci has been forced to be behind protective glass since 2005 after previous attempts at vandalism.
Last year, for example, a man dressed as an old lady in a wheelchair threw a creampie at the painting while shouting: “There are people who are destroying the Earth (…) All artists, think of the Earth. That’s why I did this. Think about the planet.”
Famous artworks across Europe have increasingly become a target of climate activists, including a similar soup attack by Just Stop Oil radicals on Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting at the National Gallery in London in 2022.
In November, two activists from the same green group smuggled in hammers to the National Gallery and began smashing the glass surrounding the Rokeby Venus painting by by 17th Century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez.