The attack on the Mona Lisa’s smile

“MAIS non!” gasped at least one visitor recorded on video Sunday morning (Jan 28) as two women splashed orange liquid – or soup, as several news accounts had it – at Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Immediately, the splatterers slipped under the semicircular barrier the Louvre has in place to keep onlookers at a distance from the 16th century masterpiece. Removing their overcoats, the women revealed T-shirts reading “Riposte Alimentaire” (Food Response, an organisation that’s part of a broader alliance of environmental activists). One shouted: “What’s more important? Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food?” They were both arrested.

The painting – in the past, the target of acid, cake, rock and teacup as well as a 1911 abduction – has been displayed behind a bulletproof glass shield since 2005; it is highly unlikely to have been harmed by the latest assault. The trauma was mostly borne by eyewitnesses, and by France itself, which is in the grips of nationwide protests by farmers who began besieging Paris this week. And the rest of the world? The ripple effects reach us in an inchoate, perhaps shoulder-shrugging way. No harm, no foul, right?

The Mona Lisa – or La Gioconda, the name many Europeans know it by – has been a touchstone of Western civilisation for so long that we often forget why it is important. No one can put a price on it because the Louvre would never sell it. It has been a French possession since King Francis I purchased it in the early 16th century, soon after Da Vinci died in France. We believe it is precious because people keep saying it is precious – like being famous for being famous. Leonardo’s painting has become an icon in the worst possible way: It is recognisable in its barest outlines, which makes it easily reproducible and marketable, emblazoned on everything from umbrellas to postcards to refrigerator magnets.