By: Leo Chen

On Sunday, May 29, 2022, a man disguised as an old lady in a wheelchair vandalized the Mona Lisa inside the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. The man started punching the glass protection plate and then smearing cake on the painting. While leaving the building, accompanied by French officials, he shouted in French, “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 Mona Lisa is one of the most vulnerable paintings in the whole world. It’s been stolen and vandalized by vandals and thefts many times to add up on its worldwide fame.

In 1956, while the Mona Lisa was on display at Montauban, France, a vandal threw acid at the painting, damaging the lower part of the masterpiece, after this damage, a glass case was added for protection. Later, in the same year, a South American visitor threw a rock at the painting, shattering the glass case and cutting the paint a little.

On August 21, 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia (1881 – 1925) stole the Mona Lisa, but the masterpiece was recovered 2 years later inside the Italian waiter, museum worker, artist, and thief’s hotel room in Florence, Italy.