At the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France- A young man disguised as an elderly woman in a wheelchair, yesterday smeared cake cream at the iconic Mona Lisa painting.
The young man smeared the cream on the glass protecting the painting as a protest against the effects of climate change since it was made using oil and poplar.
As the guards were escorting him out of the room, he shouted in French, “Think of the Earth. Artists think of the Earth. All artists think of the Earth. That’s why I did it.”
In 2009, a Russian woman, distraught over being denied French citizenship, threw a ceramic teacup purchased at the Louvre, the vessel shattered against the glass enclosure but the painting was undamaged.
A new queuing system introduced in 2019 reduces the amount of time museum visitors have to wait in line to see the painting. After going through the queue, a group has about 30 seconds to see the painting.
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci painted between 1503 and 1517 and 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$870 million.
Moreso, the Mona Lisa has survived for more than 500 years, and analysts have cited that the picture is in a remarkable state of preservation as the picture is kept under strict, climate-controlled conditions in its bulletproof glass case. The humidity is maintained at 50 percent ±10 percent and the temperature is maintained between 18 and 21°C and to compensate for fluctuations in relative humidity, the case is supplemented with a bed of silica gel treated to provide 55 percent relative humidity.
