In this grab taken from video, a view of the scene after activists hurled soup at the glass protecting the Mona Lisa, at the Louvre Museum, in Paris. The two activists shouted slogans advocating for a sustainable food system. It comes as French farmers have been protesting for days across the country against several issues, including low wages. Photo / AP
In this grab taken from video, a view of the scene after activists hurled soup at the glass protecting the Mona Lisa, at the Louvre Museum, in Paris. The two activists shouted slogans advocating for a sustainable food system. It comes as French farmers have been protesting for days across the country against several issues, including low wages. Photo / AP
Protesters have hurled soup on the Mona Lisa at the Louvre museum in Paris.
The world’s most well-known painting was left covered in what appeared to be tomato soup as two activists wearing shirts with the words “Food Response” emblazoned on them launched into a speech about sustainable agriculture and the food supply chain.
The painting is protected behind a glass panel.
In a video that captured the act, voices in the background can be heard expressing shock with groans of “No”. Children can be heard crying in the footage.
“Our agricultural system is sick,” one of the activists shouts. “Our farmers are dying at work. One in three French people doesn’t eat three meals a day.”
“What is more important? Art or the right to have a healthy and sustainable food system?” the activists shouted.
Museum staff moved swiftly to block the view of the smeared painting and the activists in front of it. They erected dividers to block the painting.
The room was also immediately evacuated, with a clean-up operation under way.
The Mona Lisa, the 16th-century painting by Leonardo da Vinci, is the star attraction of the Louvre, which is the most-visited museum in the world and attracted nearly nine million visitors in 2023.
The activists were identified as Sasha, 24, and Marie-Juliette, 63. Their Food Response movement is part of the wider, disruptive climate campaign group A22 Network, which also includes Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion.
It presents itself as a “French civil resistance campaign which aims to bring about a radical change in society on a climatic and social level”.
Amongst their demands, the collective calls for France to bolster its social security system and provide citizens with a €150 ($267) allowance for healthy, sustainable food.
Their protest on Sunday coincided with a week-long farmer’s protest in France which has seen major motorways blocked with convoys of tractors in a show of fury over working conditions, wages and what critics say are excessive regulations.
After it was damaged in an acid attack by a vandal in the 1950s, the Mona Lisa was placed behind bullet-proof glass.
In 2022, a man in a wheelchair disguised as a woman threw cake at the painting shouting at visitors to “think of the Earth”.
In recent years, many activists have targeted art to raise awareness about climate change.
Other attempts have included throwing soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery in October 2022, and in the following month campaigners glued themselves to Goya paintings in Madrid’s Prado museum.
