The most high-profile acts of vandalism

There are always enough problems in museums, exhibits do not get better over the years, they need constant care and restoration. But in addition to time, there is also a human factor. After all, it is not the first year that expositions have suffered from acts of vandalism.

In this issue you will find 12 of the most high-profile cases of damage to great works of art: through ignorance, political considerations, stupidity or because of schizophrenia.

Michelangelo's "David"

The fresco "Se man" in the Temple of Mercy in Borja

"Venus with a Mirror" by Diego Velasquez

In 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson took a meat axe to an exhibition at the National Gallery in London and struck seven times with it "Venus with a Mirror" by Diego Velasquez. Miss Richardson later explained that her actions were an expression of protest against the arrest of the leader of the suffragette movement Emmeline Pankhurst a day earlier: "I tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history in protest against how the state is trying to destroy Mrs. Pankhurst, a woman with the most valiant character in modern history." She also later stated that she was annoyed by "how men stare at naked Venus."

80 statues in the Villa Borghese Museum in Rome

"Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci

"Saint Anna with Mary, the Christ Child and By John the Baptist" Leonardo da Vinci

Rembrandt's "Night Watch"

The painting was attacked for the second time in 1975, when William de Rijk stabbed it ten times, motivating his act by the fact that he heard the voice of the Lord telling him to do just that. De Rijka, an unemployed teacher, was sent for compulsory treatment to a hospital for the mentally ill, and the painting was sent for a long restoration. But it was not possible to completely hide the traces, and if you look closely, you can still see traces of cuts on it.

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp

The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen

The famous Copenhagen sculpture has suffered so often from vandals and hooligans since the 1960s that the official authorities decided to move it from the shore a few meters further into the water so that it would not be so easy to get to it. The statue was beheaded twice: for the first time in 1964, for the second time in 1998 and again in 1990, but the hooligans failed to finish what they started. In 1984, her hand was sawed off (though it was returned a couple of days later). In 2003, the statue was blown up, and the "Little Mermaid" was thrown off its pedestal stone. Several times the statue was doused with paint (including nuclear pink), once wrapped in a black cloak, not to mention the silly hats that tourists regularly offer her, and in 2006 the heroine of Andersen's fairy tale was given a dildo in her hands.

"Phaedra" by Cy Twombly

"The Bay" by Helen Frankenthaler