Venice, children color with chalk the base of Verrocchio's Colleoni monument

It is not uncommon, unfortunately, to receive news of tourists who decide to leave signs of their passage on the monuments of Italian cities. It is far less usual, however, to come across episodes such as the one that occurred last weekend in Venice, in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo: some children climbed over the fence that protects the monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni, one of Verrocchio’s masterpieces, after which, armed with colored chalks, they began to color the marble base, under the indifferent eyes of their parents.

Reporting the incident in recent hours was the satirical page Mo(n)stre, which has a following of thousands of fans on its social channels and for years has been ironically denouncing what happens in the art world. Some of them, without being stopped by their parents, saw fit to ... play with the monument. Despite the intervention of some present to ask the parents to get the children off the monument, the requests reportedly fell on deaf ears, and the children continued to color the base of the work.

The figure of the Bergamasque condottiere, who headed the army of the Venetian Republic, is one of the best-known works by Verrocchio, who disappeared in 1488 without seeing the sculpture completed. It was to be completed a few years later by the Venetian sculptor Alessandro Leopardi, who was also responsible for the plinth, on which the artist engraved the date 1495 (the work was, however, placed a year later).

Obviously, those present noted, it is not so much a problem of preservation of the monument, albeit a minor one, not least because we are talking, after all, about a work in the open air, thus exposed to longer and more lasting actions than the one to which some children in search of recreation may subject it: the colored chalks do not cause permanent damage, although of course it would be better if the marble did not receive this treatment. It is, if anything, an issue of respect for rules and respect for cultural heritage. And it is then also a safety issue: in order to play with the monument, children have in fact crossed a fence that should, if anything, prevent similar behavior (it seems that instead the parents had intended it as a sort of box to keep the little ones from straying), and climbing a monument puts their safety and secondarily that of the monument at risk (in case a child has to be brought back to the ground with someone’s help, it is not hard to imagine that a possible rescuer could do damage). In any case, by evening the signs of the passage of the little ones had vanished, however, likely there was a repentance in the making.

Venice, children color with chalk the base of Verrocchio's Colleoni monument

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