Visitor Tears Hole in 17th-Century Painting at Uffizi Galleries
It seems that every summer, a handful of tourists visiting Italy wreak havoc on archaeological sites and fine art exhibitions nationwide. This Saturday, June 21, a visitor to the Uffizi Galleries in Florence tore a hole in a 17th-century portrait after stumbling backwards during an attempt to mimic the subject’s pose for a photo.
Widely circulating security footage captured the visitor standing inches away with his back to Baroque painter Anton Domenico Gabbiani’s portrait of Tuscan prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, completed between 1695 and 1700. While trying to emulate de’ Medici’s arm placement, the man lost his balance and rolled backwards on the balls of his feet, falling back on the painting and making a tear in the lower section of the artwork.
The painting has been removed from the ongoing Florence and Europe: Arts of the Eighteenth Century at the Uffizi exhibition for repairs. The museum soon anticipates its return to public view, though its website states that the exhibition is closed through July 2. The visitor has been identified by Italian police and reported to judicial authorities.
A spokesperson for the Uffizi Galleries declined to comment on the matter directly, referring Hyperallergic to a public statement by Museum Director and exhibition co-curator Simone Verde in which he said that the “problem of visitors who come to museums to make memes or take selfies for social media is widespread.”
“We will set very precise limits, preventing behaviours that are not compatible with the sense of our institutions and respect for cultural heritage,” Verde continued.
The incident at the Uffizi Galleries comes just months after another pair of visitors accidentally destroyed a chair sculpture encrusted with Swarovski crystals on display at the Palazzo Maffei in Verona. One of the visitors was pretending to sit on the work for a photo before losing balance and applying their weight on the hollow sculpture, causing it to collapse.
