Don’t let your heart stop. The curators at the Louvre Museum know the pricelessness of the painting it is privileged to hold and thus protected it from a (somewhat) well-meaning protester, the type that would throw a cake at Leonardo DaVinci’s greatest work.

According to the AP:

A man seemingly disguised as an old woman in a wheelchair threw a piece of cake at the glass protecting the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum and shouted at people to think of planet Earth.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday that the 36-year-old man was detained following Sunday’s incident and sent to a police psychiatric unit. An investigation has been opened into the damage of cultural artifacts.

Videos posted on social media showed a young man in a wig and lipstick who had arrived in a wheelchair. The man, whose identity was unknown, was also seen throwing roses in the museum gallery to slack-jawed guests.

There was a very noticeable white cream covering the glass that, upon seeing the picture, one draws a very quick breath.

Security guards were filmed escorting the wig-wearing man away as he called out to the surprised visitors in the gallery: “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.”

Well, it certainly is a good idea to think of the earth but, let’s pretend the painting was exposed, depriving the earth of one of its greatest man-made treasures doesn’t seem like a very productive way to take care of that same earth.

It seems like a good way to infuriate people.

WATCH:

The Mona Lisa was left shaken but unharmed when a visitor to the Louvre tried to smash the glass protecting the world's most famous painting, before smearing cream across its surface in an apparent climate-related publicity stunt https://t.co/4ZrGg0tXSK pic.twitter.com/56eXIGJf3h

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 30, 2022

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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, with Nicole Hickman