French police have detained a woman accused of
defacing an iconic Delacroix painting, Liberty Leading The People, at a branch
of the Louvre Museum.
She was held
after being seen scrawling a graffiti tag on the painting, a Romantic
masterpiece painted in 1830 to celebrate a French uprising.
The museum in
the northern town of Lens said the work might easily be cleaned but would be
examined by a restorer.
The Louvre Lens
museum only opened in the former mining town in December.
The painting by
Eugene Delacroix, which featured on the pre-euro, 100-franc French banknote and
reportedly inspired the Statue of Liberty in New York, is being exhibited in
Lens for a year.
French media
quoted unnamed legal sources as saying the graffito was a clear reference to a
9/11 conspiracy theory.
The gallery
remained closed to the public on Friday.
'Unstable'
Just before
closing time the previous day, a 28-year-old woman scrawled the 30cm (12in)
graffito on the bottom of the painting and was immediately detained by a museum
guard, France's 20 Minutes news website reported.
The work
itself, which commemorates the July Revolution of 1830, measures 325cm by
260cm.
The mark may be
"easily cleaned" but a restoration expert was being sent from the
parent museum in Paris, the museum said in a statement.
No decision has
yet been taken on whether the painting will have to be removed, the museum was
quoted as saying by French broadcaster France 3.
The local
prosecutor, Philippe Peyroux, told AFP news agency that the woman in custody
appeared to be "unstable" and that he had requested a psychiatric
examination.
He added that
the woman, whose identity has not been released, had a "French-sounding name".
Source: BBC
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