Possagno, foreign tourist sits on Canova's Pauline Borghese and damages it

There has been a serious incident of damage at the “Antonio Canova” Gypsotheca Museum in Possagno: an Austrian tourist sat on the plaster model of Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix, Antonio Canova ’s 1804 masterpiece, and damaged it. Reporting the incident is Vittorio Sgarbi, president of the Canova Foundation in Possagno.

“After the reopening of the museums, and among them the Gipsoteca Museum in Possagno,” Sgarbi told the press, “there is a sensational episode, which does not come from Italian visitors, nor from non-Europeans, but from an unconscious Austrian tourist who thought he was posing for a photo opportunity by sitting on the Paolina Borghese, breaking her toes. I call for clarity and rigor from law enforcement and the judiciary by identifying the reckless vandal with security tools, and not allowing him to go unpunished and return home. The defacement of Canova is unacceptable.”

The work preserved at the Possagno Gipsoteca, which houses a fundamental collection of Canova’s plaster casts, is the original plaster model of the marble work preserved at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, and has been in the Venetian town (Canova’s birthplace) since 1829: it was brought there directly from Canova’s Roman studio, at the initiative of his half-brother, Monsignor Giambattista Sartori. The work had already been damaged, but in 1917, during the bombing of World War I (there was severe damage to the head, detached from the rest of the statue, the veil, the hands and the feet): it was then subjected to an integrative restoration in 2004, which started with a 3D scan of the marble.

Pictured is the plaster cast of Pauline Borghese. Ph. Credit Lino Zanesco

Possagno, foreign tourist sits on Canova's Pauline Borghese and damages it

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