There’s a reason that most museums make extensive use of red velvet ropes and signs asking people not to touch, move, or sit on the art.

What should be obvious, especially when the items on display are valuable, is somehow lost on some people.

It’s sad, but true.

Add in the fact that the standard mantra of seemingly all tourists is “pics or it didn’t happen”, and you have a recipe for disaster.

This was the case in Italy, when an Austrian man visiting the Gipsoteca Museum in Possagno on July 31, decided to hop onto a cast model of Antonio Canova’s statue of Paolina Bonaparte.

He managed to break off three of its toes, while his fellow traveller took a picture.

Over to CNN:

The damaged statue is the original plaster cast model from which Canova carved a marble statue that is housed in the Borghese Gallery in Rome.

Canova was a revered sculptor who lived from 1757-1822 and was famous for his marble statues.

Image: Rubens Alarcon/Alamy

Police told CNN that the man was with a group of eight Austrian tourists and broke away to take a selfie of himself “sprawled over the statue.”

For the record, the statue is more than 200 years old, and survived two World Wars, only to be damaged by the idiocy of a tourist.

Watch him in action:

Note how he saunters off as if nothing happened.

Museum officials were not impressed:

Vittorio Sgarbi, the president of the Antonio Canova Foundation, wrote in a Facebook post that he has asked police for “clarity and rigor.”

He wrote that the man must not “remain unpunished and return to his homeland. The scarring of a Canova is unacceptable.”

Yeah, don’t mess with the Italians and their art, it won’t end well.

Coronavirus measures mean that all museum visitors must leave their personal information for eventual contact tracing in the event that an outbreak is tied to a museum visit. This is how the man was identified.

When police contacted a woman who signed in on behalf of herself and her husband, she burst into tears and admitted her husband was the toe breaker…

The husband, who was also upset, then confessed and repented for the “stupid move,” according to the release.

Stupid, indeed.

Given that he failed to tell anybody what had happened, my sympathies are limited.

[source:cnn]