The ‘Mona Lisa’ is smeared with cake by a man dressed as an elderly woman.

A man dressed as an elderly woman was witnessed attempting to vandalise the Mona Lisa, the most iconic painting in the Louvre Museum, on Sunday afternoon in Paris.

A young man masquerading as an elderly woman leapt out of his wheelchair and smashed a cake against the bulletproof glass guarding Leonardo da Vinci’s classic painting, according to witnesses.

Later, the man flung roses throughout the room before being apprehended by security. As he was removed out the building, a recording shows the invader addressing the gathering that there are people trying to destroy the globe and that they should think about it. The museum personnel later cleaned the protective glass without causing any damage to the original artwork.

Leonardo’s 1503 masterwork is currently one of the most well-protected works of art in the world, having survived numerous attacks over the course of more than 500 years. The painting was famously stolen in 1911, and it has been stolen several times since then. In the 1950s, a man sprayed sulfuric acid on the painting, and in 1956, a Bolivian student smashed the Mona Lisa canvas with a stone. Prior to this event, a Russian woman who had been denied French citizenship flung a porcelain teacup at the glass cage in 2009.