The Mona Lisa was attacked with a cake in 2022. On 29 May that year, a man disguised as a woman in a wheelchair threw cake at the protective glass covering Leonardo’s painting at the Louvre.
The stunt was presented as a climate protest. After the attack, the man reportedly urged people to think about the planet and the environment. The cake smeared the glass, but the Mona Lisa itself was not damaged because it was shielded behind the protective barrier. The protester was arrested and placed in psychiatric care.
This incident is often confused with other attacks on the portrait. A visitor threw a rock in 1956, a woman sprayed red paint at the painting’s protective enclosure in Tokyo in 1974, and a Russian visitor threw a ceramic cup in 2009. In January 2024, activists threw soup at the glass in a separate protest.