While posing for a selfie a careless tourist snapped the toes off a 200-year-old sculpture in an Italian museum


Do you remember the world’s largest glass blown castle worth $64,000 that was accidentally toppled by two kids? The world scrutinized the parents for their negligence, the kids for their bad behavior, and so on. What would the same people say to the 50-year-old Austrian tourist who leaned on the ‘Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as Venus Victrix’ artwork and ended up leaving the 200-year-old sculpture short of two toes? The unfortunate marble toe laceration took place on July 31 at the Gipsoteca Museum in Possagno. I think it’s now safe to blame these damages on enthusiasm and not age and the Austrian tourist sure had a whole lot of it. He was part of a group of Austrian tourists but left his friends to get a selfie which involved sprawling all over the statue. His desire for the perfect picture with a dated statue made him plant himself on the base of the 200-year-old statue for an acrobatic selfie. 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. He thought he smoothed out by quickly moving away from the exhibit without telling anyone but staffers were alerted of the damage after an alarm in the room went off.

The Gipsoteca Museum had rules in place for tracking visitors amid the coronavirus. The new coronavirus measures obliged people to leave their personal contact details with staff at the museum.

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[Via: CNN]

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