A 50-year-old Austrian tourist visiting the Antonio Canova Museum in Possagno, northeastern Italy, has damaged a statue of Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix. The neoclassical work was produced in the early 1800s by the famous Venetian artist Antonio Canova. The man sat on the sculpture in order to take his photo, breaking the delicate toes of the plaster sculpture.
The man apologized and said he wanted to take responsibility for the incident. This resident of the Austrian village of Aistersheim was visiting with a group of tourists. According to ANSA, he offered to pay the costs of restoring the work. The provincial court in Treviso has not yet decided whether proceedings will be taken.
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In a letter to Vittorio Sgarbi, an Italian politician and controversial art critic, and who is also President of the Antonio Canova Foundation, which was published on the museum's social networks, the man publicly apologizes: “During the visit I sat on the statue, without however realizing the damage that I obviously caused. It was irresponsible behavior on my part.”
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Sgarbi had contacted the authorities with the aim of arresting the tourist before he could return to Austria. The Carabinieri (Italian police) managed to identify the man thanks to the online reservation made by his wife. The man insisted he was unaware he had broken the sculpture. "I didn’t flee, I apologize in any way possible". When the police contacted the wife, she burst into tears and admitted what had happened.
The museum has released the surveillance footage on which the man can be seen half-lying on the sculpture, while his wife takes a photo. After getting up, he looks at the sculpture again and touches it lightly before turning around, then walking away.
In a post on the institution's social networks, Sgarbi commented: "I appreciate the civic sense of this citizen, and I take note of his words of embarrassment for what happened.”
The 1804 work, a portrait of Napoleon's sister, Pauline Bonaparte, is an original plaster model made for the final marble version, kept in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The Canova Museum houses a gypsothèque, or ‘collection of plasters’, dedicated to the artist's work.
