Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (around 1503-19) was attacked at the Musée du Louvre, in Paris, today by environmental activists who threw soup over the world’s most-recognised and most-viewed painting. The celebrated portrait, which has been protected by bullet-proof glass for the past seven decades, is presumed not to have been damaged by the attack.
In a video posted on X by the French news agency CLPRESS, two women members of the food protest group Riposte Alimentaire (“food response”) are seen approaching the semi-circular wooden barrier in front of the painting, before throwing soup at it and climbing under the barriers. They stand in front of the canvas, and are heard demanding, in French, the right to “healthy and sustainable food”, saying “our agricultural system is sick”. Security guards are then seen erecting black screens in front of the portrait and its soup-splattered protective glazing.
Rachida Dati, the French minister of culture, said in a post on X that “no cause could justify [the Mona Lisa] being attacked”. The painting—known in France as “La Joconde” for the subject’s famously enigmatic smile—belongs, Dati said, “like all our heritage to future generations. I send my support to the staff at the Louvre”.
The soup attack came during a weekend of agricultural protests in Paris, and just over two months since climate activists from the pressure group Just Stop Oil made a hammer attack on Diego Velazquez’s The Toilet of Venus (widely known as the “Rokeby Venus”) at the National Gallery, in London, on 6 November. (The “Rokeby Venus” was removed from display for conservation treatment to minor damage sustained to the painting surface, and the fitting of new glazing, before being re-hung four weeks later.)
Just Stop Oil and Riposte Alimentaire, along with Extinction Rebellion, are part of the A22 network of protest groups in 12 countries. “We are an international network racing to save humanity,” the movement says on its website. “We have a recipe for effective civil resistance.”
