Appalling vandalism at the National Gallery

July 17 2011

Nicolas Poussin's masterpiece, Adoration of the Golden Calf, has been vandalised and sprayed with red paint. The attack happened at the National Gallery, London, yesterday at about 5pm. Aparently another smaller picture was also attacked, but the details of this have not been released. The Guardian reports:

Witnesses reported seeing a man spraying the paintings with a canister as security guards rushed over before detaining him in the room and contacting police. Five officers later came to arrest the man, who is thought to be French.

This is an act of reprehensible stupidity, which I find almost impossible to comprehend. How could anybody do something so pointless and deranged? The picture has survived unmolested for nearly 400 years, and is now possibly damaged forever just because some nutter decided he wanted to make a point.

Obviously, he should be jailed for a long time. The maximum sentence for criminal damage in this respect is ten years. There is a special section of criminal damage for 'heritage items', but oddly enough this does not include paintings.

My immediate worry is obviously the damage to the picture. If regular spray-paint was used, then who knows how much damaged will have been done. Our best hope is that this French pillock used an easily removable type of paint. 

The next question must be how was this allowed to happen? It does not look as if it was the work of a moment, especially if two pictures were damaged. Being a security guard can be a tedious job, but that doesn't excuse those at the National sitting there playing sudoku, as I've seen before.

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