Daily, regardless of indoor hours Louvrebefore Mona Lisa Leonardo a crowd of people is crowding. In front of a well-protected (glass) and cordoned-off painting, fans stretch out to take a photo or selfie. Gioconda is probably the most photographed celebrity in history: the tourists’ obsession is repeated like a ritual, the same thing every day. However, yesterday, an event disrupted the daily work of the French museum. One man managed to throw a cake in Mona Lisa’s face as a display gesture.. Luckily, there is no damage, but the video of the incident has already gone viral.

It appears that the man who threw the cake managed to enter the museum in a wheelchair disguised as a woman in a wig. The cake appeared to be hidden under her clothes, and she managed to get through the security at the entrance. Once in the room, the man went up to the barriers and smeared cake (presumably cream) on the glass of the case protecting Leonardo’s painting. “This doesn’t feel real to me,” wrote one user on Twitter.A man dressed as an elderly lady got up from his wheelchair and tried to break the protective glass of the Mona Lisa. He then threw the cake onto the glass and scattered rose petals around him before being escorted away by security personnel.It appears to have been a demonstrative gesture meant to draw attention to environmental causes. “Think of the Earth,” the man shouted as the guards led him out of the museum, “there are people who are destroying the Earth. Think about it. Artists tell you, ‘Think about the Earth.” All artists think about the Earth. That’s why I did it. Think about the Planet!”

Of course, this is not the first time the Mona Lisa has been attacked. Most striking is the story of Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian immigrant in France who even managed to steal a painting in 1911, hide it under his jacket and take it to Italy, where he tried to sell it to an antiquarian in Florence (of course, unsuccessfully). However, there are more recent episodes. In 1956, a man and a woman tried to deface the Mona Lisa with acid and stone (and in this case, there was also minor damage). In 1974, when the painting was exhibited in Tokyo, a woman with a disability sprayed a red spray on the display case to protest the museum’s policies. In the end, in 2009 a woman threw a cup of tea at her which even in this case crashed against the protective glass.

Yesterday it was the turn of the cake and, fortunately, that was enough to clean everything up.. Moreover, even Anna Wintour, the famous director of Vogue America, got her cake in the face from the animal rights group, and the same for Bill Gates, Cher, Ariana Grande and many other celebrities. Wikipedia has a page that collects all of them: “List of famous people who were motley.” Now we can also add the Mona Lisa.