Cake thrown at Mona Lisa in bizarre show of environmental activism | Watch

Dressed as an old woman in a wheelchair, a man threw a cake at the iconic Mona Lisa in the Louvre in what appears to have been a rather unorthodox show of environmental activism.

Videos shared on social media showed the man, wearing a wig and a lipstick, jumping out of his wheelchair and throwing a piece of cake at Leonardo Da Vinci‘s timeless painting while calling for greater environmental awareness.

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“Think of the Earth. There are people who are destroying the Earth. Think about it. Artists tell you: Think of the Earth. That’s why I did this,” the man was heard shouting in French before being escorted out by museum security.

While the cake attack left a white smear on the protective glass casing of the Mona Lisa, the actual painting was left unharmed.

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Interestingly, however, this was not the first attack on the Mona Lisa.

In 1911, the 16th century Renaissance masterpiece was stolen by a museum employee before being returned to the Louvre in 1914.

The painting was also damaged in an acid attack in the 1950s, after which it was put under bulletproof glass for protection.

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Subsequently, in 1974 when the Mona Lisa was on display at the Tokyo National Museum, a woman sprayed it with red paint to protest against the museum’s lack of facilities for the disabled.

More than three decades later, in 2009, the Mona Lisa again came under attack, this time by a Russian woman who threw a ceramic teacup at the 16th century masterpiece to protest being denied citizenship in France.