Aug 11, 2009
Mona Lisa smiles on

PARIS - AN 'UNHINGED' Russian woman threw a teacup at the world's most famous painting, Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa,' but it emerged unscathed due to its bullet-proof glass cover, the Louvre museum said on Tuesday.

'The young woman took a cup out of her bag and threw it over the heads of other people who were looking at the painting. The cup smashed on the bullet-proof glass which was slightly scratched,' a spokesman said.

'It looks like it was done by someone who was unhinged and wanted to draw attention to herself,' he said.

The woman put up no resistance when museum guards apprehended her after the incident on August 2.

She was handed over to police who said the woman 'did not have all her mental faculties and has been transferred to the police psychiatric infirmary.'

The Louvre, the biggest art museum in the world, has thousands of paintings, but most of the millions of visitors a year make a bee-line for the Mona Lisa, known in France as La Joconde.

The 500-year-old painting was stolen in 1911 from the Louvre but was returned after an Italian was arrested for its theft two years later.

It was doused with acid by a vandal in 1956 and later the same year a Bolivian damaged it again by throwing a rock at it. -- AFP