Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. Two protesters on Sunday hurled soup at the bullet-proof glass protecting Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in Paris, demanding the right to “healthy and sustainable food”, an AFP journalist saw.
Two women threw red and orange soup onto the glass protecting the smiling lady to gasps from the crowd in the French capital’s Louvre museum, an AFP video journalist reported.
“What is more important? Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food,” they asked, standing in front of the painting and speaking in turn.
“Your agricultural system is sick. Our farmers are dying at work.”
The action comes as French farmers have been protesting for days to demand better pay, taxes and regulations.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Friday announced several measures, but road blockages have continued in different parts of the country.
Sunday’s action follows a series of such stunts by climate activists against world-famous paintings to demand more action to phase out fossil fuels and protect the planet.
It was not the first attack on the “Mona Lisa”.
A 36-year-old man threw a custard pie at her in May 2022, because artists were not focusing enough on “the planet”, but the thick glass casing ensured she came to no harm.
The dousing of a glass-covered Mona Lisa in pumpkin soup is the latest in a string of cases of priceless artworks being targeted by environmental activists.
OPINION | Soup on Van Gogh and graffiti on Warhol: The long history of museums as a site of protest
Here are some of the other cases that have made headlines in the past two years:
1. Soup for “Sunflowers”
In October 2022, two activists from the Just Stop Oil group emptied cans of tomato soup over the glass protecting Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery.
The pair, who complained that art lovers were more concerned with paintings than the planet, were arrested and charged with damaging the frame.
A month later, activists from the Last Generation group splashed pea soup onto another Van Gogh – “The Sower” – in Rome.
The painting, exhibited behind glass, was also undamaged.
2. Mash for Monet
In October 2022, protesters from the German branch of Last Generation flung mash at a Claude Monet, “Les Meules” (The Haystacks), hanging in a museum in Potsdam. It, too, was protected by glass.
In June 2023, activists in Stockholm smeared red paint and glued their hands to the glass covering another of the French impressionist’s works, “The Artist’s Garden at Giverny”, in a Swedish museum.
3. Glued to Vermeer
In October 2022, a man in Dutch city of The Hague glued his head to the glass protecting Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” in the Mauritshuis museum.
A second activist poured tomato soup on it.
4. Hands-on with Goya
In November 2022, two Extinction Rebellion activists each glued a hand to the frames of two paintings by Spanish master Francisco Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid.
The protest did not damage either painting.
5. Painting Degas
In April 2023, climate activists attacked a famous Degas wax sculpture – “La petite danseuse de quatorze ans” (Little Dancer, 14 years old) – in a Washington museum, smearing its Plexiglas enclosure with red and black paint.
“Today, through nonviolent rebellion, we temporarily defiled a work of art to evoke the very real children whose suffering is certain if deadly fossil fuel companies continue to mine coal, oil and gas from the soil”, the group which claimed the action, which called itself Declare Emergency, wrote on Instagram.
6. Taking a hammer to Velasquez
In November 2023, Just Stop Oil protesters smashed the glass cover of a Diego Velazquez painting, “The Rokeby Venus”, at the National Gallery in London with hammers.
They said they were inspired by the work of a suffragette who slashed the painting in the early 20th century during a campaign for the right to vote.
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