Protesters for food safety threw soup at the glass-protected Mona Lisa painting at the Louvre Museum in France.
According to BBC, demonstrators want the right to healthy and sustainable food.
Two female protesters are seen pouring fluids in footage from the event, wearing T-shirts with the slogan “food counterattack”.
They stand in front of the painting, questioning: “What is more important?” “Art or the right to nutritious and sustainable food?”
They said, “Your agriculture system is sick. “Our farmers are dying at work.”
Before the room is evacuated, museum security officials are seen putting up black screens in front of them.
The demonstrators are members of a group known as “Riposte Alimentaire” (Food Counterattack), who claimed credit for the stunt.
According to the group’s statement, the stunt marked the “beginning of a civil resistance campaign” with the demand for “sustainable food.”
Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian polymath from the 15th century, created the Mona Lisa painting, which is one of the world’s most iconic artworks.
To protect the picture, it is displayed behind bulletproof glass in the Louvre in central Paris.
Rachida Dati, France’s culture minister, responded to the demonstration by saying that no cause can justify targeting the Mona Lisa.
“Like our heritage, the painting belongs to future generations,” she noted in a reaction on X.
The food security protest is the latest in a string of civil disobedience actions directed at the Mona Lisa over the years.
The picture has been protected behind safety glass since the 1950s, when a tourist spilt acid on it.
In 2019, the museum announced that it has installed a more transparent type of bulletproof glass to protect it.
In 2022, an activist tossed a cake at the painting, imploring people to “think of the earth”.