A 12-year-old Taiwanese boy lived out a slapstick nightmare at the weekend when he tripped at a museum and broke his fall with a 350-year-old painting, smashing a hole in the work of art valued at $1.5m.
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Luckily for the boy and his family, they will not be asked to pay.
The Paolo Porpora painting, called Flowers, is believed to have been painted in the mid-1600s, and was one of more than 50 paintings on display as part of the exhibition.
CCTV shows the 12-year-old stumbling over the rope barrier separating visitors from the 17th-century oil painting, and as he is catching his balance, he ends up punching a hole in the canvas.
Video footage released by the organisers shows the boy, who was visiting on Sunday, trip over a platform in front of the artwork and then brace himself against the painting to break his fall.
The boy’s parents would have been relieved to hear the exhibition organisers plan to approach their insurer to fund the painting’s restoration.
The head of the exhibition Sun Chi-hsuan told the news site the 200cm tall painting is around 350-years-old. “Once these works are damaged, they are permanently damaged…we hope that everyone can protect these precious artworks with us”, the company behind the exhibit said in a post on its official Facebook page.
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Andrea Rossi, curator of the exhibition, said the gallery would restore the painting before sending it back home to Italy. The exhibition was temporarily closed soon after the boy punched the painting, but reopened later in the afternoon.
