1 of 2. Vincent Pomarede, curator of painting department at the Louvre Lens Museum, poses front of Eugene Delacroix 's painting, ''Liberty Leading the People (28 July 1830) (La Liberte guidant le peuple) in ''La Galerie du Temps'' (Gallery of Time) during a media day on the eve of the inauguration of the Le Louvre Lens Museum, in Lens, northern France, in this December 3, 2012 file photo.

PARIS | Fri Feb 8, 2013 12:04pm EST

PARIS (Reuters) - A woman has defaced Eugene Delacroix's painting "Liberty Leading the People" with a black marker as it hung in an outpost of the Louvre gallery in northern France.

Police arrested a 28-year-old woman on Thursday for writing "AE911" across the bottom of a painting so closely identified with the French Republic that its image once graced the 100-franc note and it has been reproduced on postage stamps.

Painted in 1830, the work was on loan from the main Louvre in Paris to the new Louvre-Lens gallery in northern France inaugurated last December by President Francois Hollande.

"AE911Truth" is the name of a website called "Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth" whose backers say they are seeking to establish the truth of the September 11, 2001 suicide airliner attacks on New York's Twin Towers.

"It had really become an icon, a sort of symbol of the Republic which has remained famous throughout the ages," said Vincent Pomarede, head of the Louvre's painting department.

"We have a very passionate relationship with all our paintings and when something like this happens it's really hard to handle," he said.

Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" was painted after the 1830 July Revolution as a symbol of reconciliation following the overthrow of Bourbon King Charles X and the ascent to the throne of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans.

The work, depicting a bare-breasted woman brandishing a tricolor flag and leading her people over the bodies of the fallen, was later adopted as a revolutionary emblem in the 1848 uprising which overthrew the Orleans monarchy.

It subsequently disappeared from public view before resurfacing in the Louvre after the advent of the Third Republic in 1871, after which its place in the French national consciousness was sealed.

The Louvre confirmed on Friday it had managed to save the painting as the black marker had not penetrated the upper layer of varnish and has been successfully removed.

Opened in December, the 150 million euro ($195 million) art center in Lens houses temporary exhibitions as well as a rotating collection of works from the Louvre museum in Paris.

It was conceived in an effort to regenerate a dreary northern region of France, once known for its mining industry, but now in economic decline.

While the Louvre in Paris looks out onto manicured lawns and flowerbeds of the Tuileries Gardens, Louvre-Lens sits on a disused coalmine and offers views onto slag heaps and a stadium housing the local football club.

(Additional reporting By Pierre Savary; Editing by Brian Love and Paul Casciato)

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KADUNA, Nigeria | Sun Dec 23, 2012 6:15pm EST

KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian Islamist group Ansaru said on Sunday it was behind the kidnap of a French national last week, citing France's ban on full-face veils and its support for military action in Mali.

Ansaru sent a message to Nigerian reporters saying it was holding 63-year-old Francis Colump, who was taken on December 19 when around 30 gunmen attacked his residence in the remote northern town of Rimi, close to the Niger border.

The Nigerian police declined to comment on the claim but had already named Colump as the man abducted. He was working for French renewable energy firm Vergnet, which had been building Nigeria's first wind farm.

"The reason we kidnapped him is ... the law the government created which prohibits the wearing of niqab by French Muslim women. This is a denial of their religious rights," said the statement by the group, written in the local Hausa language.

"And again the participation of France in supporting the military attack on Muslims in northern Mali," the message signed by the group's purported leader Abu Usamata Ansari said.

In recent months France has led support for an African-led force to help defeat al Qaeda and other Islamist militants in northern Mali. Military deployment has the backing of the U.N. Security Council.

Last year, France banned full face veils.

Ansaru's full name is Jama'atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan, which roughly translates as "Vanguards for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa".

The group, thought to be a breakaway from better known Islamist sect Boko Haram, has risen to greater prominence in recent weeks.

It claimed responsibility for a dawn raid on a major police station in the Nigerian capital last month, where it said hundreds of prisoners were released.

Britain last month put Ansaru on its official "terrorist group" list, saying it was aligned with al Qaeda and was behind the kidnap of a British and a Italian killed earlier this year during a failed rescue attempt.

Ansaru is thought to have loose ties to Boko Haram, which has killed hundreds this year in an insurgency focused mostly on Nigerian security forces, religious targets and politicians, rather than foreigners.

Western governments are increasingly concerned about Islamists in Nigeria linking up with groups outside the region, including al Qaeda's north African wing.

Colump's kidnap takes to nine the number of French citizens currently held hostage in Africa: seven others are in the arid Sahel belt and one in Somalia.

France's Intelligence agency said last week it believed "terrorist" links were behind the latest abduction.

"We are informing the government of France that we would continue to attack ... its citizens anywhere in the world as long as the government does not retract on its policies," Ansaru's statement said. ($1 = 0.7590 euros)

(Additional reporting and writing by Joe Brock; editing by Jason Webb)

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France's President Francois Hollande (R), his companion Valerie Trierweiler (2ndL) and Louvre museum's president Henri Loyrette visit the new Department of Islamic Arts galleries during its official opening ceremony at the Louvre museum in Paris September 18, 2012.

PARIS | Thu Oct 11, 2012 12:59pm EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - President Francois Hollande's Socialist government moved on Thursday to halt a push to extend a wealth tax to artworks, eager to head off a new tax row during a belt-tightening drive.

Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti said that Hollande and Prime Minister Ayrault shared her opposition to targeting art with the wealth tax, as sought by a fellow Socialist lawmaker.

Following a proposal from MP Christian Eckert, the lower house of parliament's finance committee backed an amendment to the 2013 budget on Wednesday that would apply the tax to art, even though the measure is divisive for both the left and right.

With a long tradition of public support for the arts, France has spared artworks from the wealth tax since former Socialist president Francois Mitterrand introduced the levy in 1982.

People with assets worth more than 1.3 million euros ($1.68 million) are liable for the wealth tax of 0.25 percent on top of their income tax. The rate doubles to 0.5 percent for assets over 3 million euros.

Hollande's cash-strapped government has already come under fire for adding new taxes on the rich, especially for a new 75 percent tax rate on incomes over 1 million euros which is prompting some wealthy French to consider moving abroad.

Eckert said earlier this week that the measure was more about fiscal justice than raising new revenues, which he acknowledged were unlikely to be significant.

Under the amendment, artworks worth more than 50,000 euros would be included in the assets used to calculate a person's fortune. Eckert had originally sought the threshold to be 5,000 euros.

Filippetti said it would be a "grave error" to take away special tax treatment for art at a time of growing competition between the world's major art markets.

"We have made and will make efforts so Paris recovers a top position. That's the best way to help French artists," Filippetti said in an interview on the website of Les Echos newspaper.

ART WORLD UP IN ARMS

The amendment quickly ruffled feathers in the Paris art world just as it is preparing for the opening next week of its annual flagship art show, the FIAC.

"I think we should be extremely careful in France and very vocal against the extreme danger of this bill," said FIAC director Jennifer Flay.

"It would compromise the art market's healthy fundamentals and put at risk the means by which artists make a living," she added.

The amendment is to be voted on by the lower house of parliament next week and then go before the Senate. The Socialists have a majority in both chambers.

The fiscal credibility of President Hollande's government already took a knock last week when high-profile protests by business owners forced the government to retreat from plans to raise taxes on entrepreneurs when they sell their companies.

Hollande is pushing through France's toughest budget in at least three decades, relying heavily on tax increases on the wealthy as it seeks to get its deficit down to 3 percent of national output next year from 4.5 percent this year.

Socialist party veteran Jack Lang, Mitterrand's culture minister when the wealth tax was introduced, urged lawmakers to vote against the measure on art, warning it would harm the art market and France's cultural reputation.

"It would cause a haemorrhage of art, and collectors' exile to more welcoming countries," Lang said in a statement.

Stephane Jacquin, head of wealth management at Lazard Freres Gestion, said he did not expect the amendment to get sufficient backing in parliament.

"This isn't the first time this debate has come up, and each time art continues to be excluded from the wealth tax," he said. ($1 = 0.7751 euros)

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas and Lionel Laurent; Writing by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Susan Fenton, Ron Askew)

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The speaker's podium with the logo of Societe Generale bank is pictured during a news conference to present the bank's 2011 annual results in La Defense near Paris February 16, 2012.

PARIS | Thu Aug 9, 2012 7:08am EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - What does every woman want? One French bank thinks it knows the answer: Handbag insurance and a handyman hotline.

The pink-and-gold-colored "Pour Elle" bank card, part of a cut-price summer offer by Paris-based lender Societe Generale, promises to "simplify" women's lives with up to 200 euros ($250) of handbag theft insurance and a dedicated hotline for up to two electrician, locksmith or other handyman callouts per year.

As useful as these products might be, not all women are happy to be singled out by their bank as needing special help.

"It's a little cheeky to promote both at the same time as 'female crises' that could arise," said Lys-Aelia Hart, a 24-year-old assistant art buyer living in Paris. "In my eyes, many men don't know how to deal with a serious electrical issue - on the contrary, they'd probably get killed."

A spokeswoman for SocGen said the cards had been a "great success" and said the bank did not view them as sexist. "We don't think it's a discriminatory approach," she said. "Those who choose these cards are those who wish to adhere to their femininity."

Even men aren't shy about signing up for the card, added the spokeswoman. "Five percent of cardholders are men," she said.

Despite the noble intentions, the card still looks to some like a misguided attempt to cater to women's needs. "I don't need my bank to dictate what kind of services I need, but it's kind of them to offer," said Hart.

(Reporting by Lionel Laurent, editing by Paul Casciato)

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