Man arrested after Mona Lisa smeared with cake

Officials at the Louvre Museum in Paris, where the enigmatic portrait holds pride of place, declined to comment on the bizarre incident on Sunday, which was captured on several phones and circulated widely on social media.

The work by Leonardo da Vinci, which has been the target of vandalism attempts in the past, was unharmed thanks to its bulletproof glass case.

A Twitter user identified as Lukeee posted a video showing a museum employee wiping a mess off the glass and another showing a man dressed in white being escorted away by security guards.

No images have emerged showing the actual incident.

The Mona Lisa has been behind glass since a Bolivian man threw a rock at the painting in December 1956, damaging her left elbow. In 2005 it was placed in a reinforced case that also controls temperature and humidity.

In 2009 a Russian woman threw an empty teacup at the painting, which slightly scratched the case.

The Louvre is the largest museum in the world, housing hundreds of thousands of works that attracted about 10 million visitors a year before the Covid-19 pandemic.