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Louvre Painting Vandalized

A woman looks at Eugene Delacroix 's painting, "Liberty Leading the People" (28 July 1830) during media day on the eve of the inauguration of the Le Louvre Lens Museum, December 3, 2012.

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VOA News

February 08, 2013

Officials at the Louvre museum in France say a woman has vandalized one of its paintings.

Authorities say the woman was detained late Thursday after scrawling "AE911" on Eugene Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People in a satellite branch of the Louvre in the northern town of Lens. The meaning of the inscription was not immediately clear.

Museum officials say they believe the painting can be restored.

Authorities have ordered a psychiatric evaluation for the 28-year-old detainee.

Louvre officials say the incident will not affect their plans to display more of the museum's masterpieces with the Louvre-Lens gallery.

The Delacroix work is among the artist's most famous. It shows a bare-breasted woman holding aloft the French flag as she urges on a crowd of revolutionaries.

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