The director of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence has pledged new selfie limits after a tourist damaged an 18th-century painting while posing in front of it for a photograph on Saturday.
The clumsy visitor tore a hole in the bottom corner of the canvas, a portrait of Ferdinando de’ Medici Grand Prince of Tuscany, painted in 1712, by Anton Domenico Gabbiani.
Museum staff intervened immediately and the man was cited by police for charges of damaging cultural heritage, while the painting was swiftly removed for restoration.
The incident occurred in the ground floor rooms hosting the exhibition Florence and Europe. Arts of the 18th Century at the Uffizi, the first under new director Simone Verde.
“We will set very precise limits, preventing behaviour that is not compatible with the sense of our institutions and respect for cultural heritage”, Verde said in response to the incident, acknowledging that “the problem of visitors who come to museums to make memes or take selfies for social media is rampant”.
The mishap is the latest in a series of tourists behaving badly in Italian museums: the most recent case involved a man who sat on a crystal-covered chair by contemporary artist Nicola Bolla at a museum in Verona, buckling the artwork before running away without informing staff of the damage.
Earlier this year a 16th-century painting by Renaissance artist Moretto was damaged after a museum visitor in Brescia tripped and fell against the valuable artwork, while three years ago an American tourist fell against a painting by Baroque master Guido Reni at Galleria Borghese in Rome.
The latest incident, which has raised fresh questions about “selfie tourism” in Italian museums, came the same day that Italy’s culture minister Alessandro Giuli visited the Uffizi to celebrate the dismantling of a giant crane that had loomed over Florence for the past 20 years.