A man dressed as an elderly woman in a wheelchair threw a cake at the iconic Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci, which is on display at the Louvre in Paris. The painting, however, was unaffected due to the protective glass that encased it.

Witness testimony revealed that the perpetrator was a man in a wheelchair wearing a large wig, according to the Spanish newspaper Marca. To everyone’s surprise, he suddenly stood up and attempted to smash the Mona Lisa’s bulletproof glass before smearing cake on the glass.

Even as the crowd continued to photograph the situation, the museum’s security staff rushed to eject the man from the room shortly after the incident.

As seen in the viral videos, museum employees were seen removing the assailant and cleaning the tarnished glass.

The Mona Lisa, an Italian Renaissance half-length portrait painting by Leonardo da Vinci, is regarded as the archetypal masterpiece. It is housed in the Louvre’s largest room, the Salle des États, which also houses other notable Venetian paintings such as Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana. It is described as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.”

Several attempts to steal or destroy the painting have been made over the years. An employee stole it from the museum in 1911, and Bolivian Ugo Ungaza Villegas threw a rock at it while it was on display in 1956. In the years that followed, several more incidents occurred. The subject’s mysterious identity, her enigmatic expression, and the painter’s unmatched art techniques draw thousands of visitors each year.

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