Protesters have thrown soup at the glass-encased Mona Lisa painting in France, advocating for the right to “healthy and sustainable food.” The 16th Century masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, housed at the Louvre in central Paris, remained unharmed behind its bulletproof glass.
Video footage captures two female demonstrators, donned in “food counterattack” T-shirts, tossing liquid at the painting. They assert, “What is more important? Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food? Your agricultural system is sick. Our farmers
Museum security deployed black screens and evacuated the room. The group responsible for the act, Riposte Alimentaire (“Food Counterattack”), conveyed their motives in a statement to AFP news agency. They declared the soup-throwing as the “initiation of a campaign of civil resistance with the explicit demand for the social security of sustainable food.”
France’s Minister for Culture, Rachida Dati, condemned the incident, stating, “No cause can justify the Mona Lisa being targeted. Like our heritage, the painting belongs to future generations,” as conveyed on X, formerly Twitter.
The Mona Lisa has been safeguarded behind safety glass since the early 1950s, following damage inflicted by a visitor who poured acid on it. In 2019, the museum upgraded to a more transparent form of bulletproof glass. This incident follows a 2022 episode where an activist threw cake at the painting, urging people to “think of the Earth.”
