By Leila Sackur—
NBC News
Environmental activists confronted a crowd at the Louvre Museum in Paris on Sunday to splatter the iconic
Mona Lisa
with canned soup.
The images show two women throwing a red liquid at the painting before crossing the wooden barrier that protects it from the crowd.
Two environmental activists from the "Riposte Alimentaire" (Food Retaliation) collective throwing soup at Leonardo Da Vinci's painting Mona Lisa (La Joconde), at the Louvre museum in Paris, on January 28, 2024. DAVID CANTINIAUX / AFP - Getty Images
One of the women took off the coat she was wearing and revealed a T-shirt that read
Riposte Alimentaire
, a food sustainability activist group in France, whose name means “food response.”
“What is more important?”
the second woman says to the screaming crowd.
“Art or healthy and sustainable food?”