Poussin attack - not the first time
July 18 2011
I'm grateful to two readers who have written to say that the Adoration of the Golden Calf has been attacked before, in 1978. Yesterday, I said wrongly that it had survived 'unmolested' until the most recent debacle.
The 1978 attack is chronicled in Adrienne Corri's engaging book, The Search for Gainsborough. Here is her fascinating diary entry for the day after the attack, when she happened to be going to the National Gallery to do some research on Gainsborough:
Everyone was in tears, even strong guards! [...]
Someone had slashed the Poussin Moses and the Children of Israel Worshipping the Golden Calf. It is one of the gallery's great treasures, one of the world's greatest pictures, or rather, was. They had closed the main galleries and the police were in charge. The only people not weeping were the science department. They were beside themselves with delight, sweeping up the tiny bits of paint which lay on the ground, and conserving them carefully. now they would know exactly what pigments Poussin used in his paints. It's an ill wind...!
[More below]
The picture wasn't there. Nothing remained of it except a fringe of canvas around the edges. The rest lay on the ground in shreds or hunks, already curling at the dges: it was the most expensive jigsaw in the world. After the police had finished taking photographs, the bits were placed carefully on large trays and taken to the restoration department. [...]
It was the most dreadful sight; so stupid. In one moment a maniac had reduced an exquisite piece of philosophy, beauty and geometry to chaos. The keepers in the gallery were uttelry shattered. They care deeply about the pictures. The man had gone to the tea room and taken a knife back with him. And they search women's hadnbags! It wasnt the knife that did the real harm. After the inital attack, the man had been pulled away by other visitors to the gallery and the guards, but he managed to get free and in seconds had torn the rest of the picture out with his bare hands. This had done the worst damage.
I don't know what the motive was for the 1978 attack - I'll try and find out. But evidently it is a picture which attracts nutters, and one wonders if it shouldn't have been glazed. It's obviously a difficult balance to strike between security and display, however. Over at Art History Today, Poussin scholar David Packwood says:
This will inevitably re-ignite debates about security in museums. While I don’t want museums to resemble banks, maybe it would be a good idea to initiate bag searches (airport style) like they have in museums like the Rijksmuseum, for example. I’m sure we’re going to be hearing a lot about such subjects in the coming months.
