Museum goers at the Louvre in Paris got an eyeful—make that a pieful—on Sunday when a supposed climate activist posing as an elderly woman in a wheelchair tried to deface Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with a cream pie.
The unnamed man had used the wheelchair to gain a front row position at the crowded exhibit, which is protected by bulletproof glass after previous attempts to harm the painting.
Museum goers say he jumped out of the wheelchair and first tried to break the security glass before taking a cream pie he had somehow hidden from what is truly some of the tightest security in Europe, and smeared it across the glass while yelling in French, “Think of the earth, people are destroying the earth. Think about it. Artists tell you: think of the Earth. That’s why I did this.”
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He then threw roses he had also somehow smuggled into the museum into the crowd and below the painting. Security escorted him from the building and it is unclear if he was charged with attempting to harm one of the world’s great masterpieces.
The painting was not affected, though the bullet proof glass appeared to have been shaken in video posted on social media of the incident.
While the man’s motives appear to be climate related given his rant, no climate groups have claimed responsibility for the prank.
It is not the first time the painting has been targeted. It was stolen by a museum employee in 1911 and the Mona Lisa’s left elbow was damaged by a rock thrown by a Bolivian man in 1956, which led to the bullet proof glass being erected.
More recently, a Russian woman protesting a citizenship rejection from the French government scratched the glass when she hurled an empty tea cup at the masterpiece.
