Rome, Arturo Martini's Minerva daubed during feminist demonstration. It had just been restored

In Rome, Arturo Martini ’s Minerva that stands in front ofLa Sapienza University was scarred during a feminist demonstration held Thursday right in front of the entrance to the university city. Beginning at 2 p.m., two thousand people gathered in Piazzale Aldo Moro for a presidium in memory of Ilaria Sula, the 22-year-old student killed by her ex-boyfriend (Sula was studying at La Sapienza), which later turned into a demonstration. The Minerva statue was daubed with some writing.

The statue was transennaded because it has undergone some restoration and maintenance work in recent weeks. These works also involved the monumental entrance to the Studium Urbis and had yet to be completed. In the course of the event, however, the grates were torn off and the statue of Arturo Martini daubed. Paint also on the monumental staircase and on the basin placed in front of the Minerva. Other areas of the University City then suffered the same treatment.

Following the damage to the sculpture, Rector Antonella Polimeni spoke openly about vandalism in an open letter posted on Sapienza’s social channels. “The pain and outrage that runs through the Sapienza Community in the face of the feminicide of our student Ilaria Sula are deep and pervasive,” Polimeni premised. “We consider important and meaningful a mobilization whose motivations are shared by all and all of us.” However, added the rector, “When the demonstration arrived in front of the statue of Minerva, in the square whose restoration is nearing completion, after years of waiting for the necessary authorizations and a significant economic commitment at the expense of the University, a group of protesters broke through the construction site area, to deface and deface the monumental staircase, the basin in front of Minerva and the statue itself. The defacement subsequently continued in other places in University City. The estimated damage, according to an initial assessment by technicians, is extensive. Our question is: Why? Why address a shared issue in divisive ways? Why characterize the fight against one of the most horrific forms of violence, feminicide, with the vandalism of a public good? Why honor the memory of a victim of patriarchal culture by defacing places she frequented and probably loved? Why should Minerva and all of Wisdom suffer further violence?”

Arturo Martini’s Minerva is one of the symbols of the Roman university. Commissioned from the Venetian sculptor in 1934 (the original bronze sketch is now in the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome), it was finished the following year and is considered among Martini’s most important bronze works. Restored for the first time in 1996 in view of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the University City, it had been restored again at the end of 2024 with an intervention that was meant to restore its original legibility. Now, therefore, it will have to be restored again.

Rome, Arturo Martini's Minerva daubed during feminist demonstration. It had just been restored

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