Eugène Delacroix’s (1798-1863) celebrated painting Liberty Leading the People was defaced while on view at the Louvre’s satellite location in Lens, which opened in the former mining town in northern France in December 2012. French police have a detained the woman accused of scrawling a graffiti tag along the bottom of the work.
Delacroix, a leader of the Romantic school in French painting, painted Liberty Leading the People to celebrate the July revolution of 1830, which brought down France’s Charles X. The work was featured on the country’s 100-franc banknote before the Euro was adopted and is rumored to have inspired New York’s Statue of Liberty.
Just before the museum closed for the day on Thursday, February 7, 2013, a 28-year-old woman scribbled in 12 inch writing what officials believe to be a reference to a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Officials believe that the work can be easily cleaned, but a restoration expert from the Louvre was being sent to Lens to perform a thorough examination. Museum officials have not yet decided if the painting will need to be removed.
