Clearly this guy has mental issues and his acts have resulted in damage to both property and people...I guess Italy like the US, has misplaced compassion and doesn't lock-up its dangerously mentally ill.
As for the statue, while its a copy of the original, its stands in the original location for the masterpiece.
Florence mayor draped David statue as sign of mourning for those killed in Ukraine war.
Police in Florence arrested a man on Friday night for setting fire to the enormous black drape covering the replica of Michelangelo's statue of David in Piazza della Signoria.
Florence mayor Dario Nardella covered the statue on 6 March, the anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth, in a symbolic sign of "mourning and pain" for the war in Ukraine.
The man arrested, Czech citizen Vaclav Pisvejcv, is currently detained in the city's Sollicciano prison on charges of arson and is already known to police as a "serial defacer" of monuments, reports state broadcaster RAI News.
Earlier this week Pisvejcv was cited for vandalising Francesco Vezzoli's monumental Pietà sculpture of a rampant lion, also in Piazza della Signoria, spray-painting the statue with the blue and yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag.
Pisvejcv, who is also known for having hit Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović on the head with a painting in 2018, was apprehended by a security guard and a city police officer after setting fire to the drape over the David statue.
Police extinguished the flames before the arrival of the fire brigade, and the city's fine arts service is to inspect the statue for signs of damage.
"David is the symbol of freedom, the Ukrainians for us are the David who fights against the tyranny of Goliath" - Mayor Nardella is quoted in Italian newspaper La Repubblica - "We hope to remove the drape soon. For the moment the idea is to keep it until the end of the war."
There has been a mixed reaction in Italy to the covering of David, however, with many people of the view that it is ill-conceived to obscure the solitary hero as he faces down the might of the enemy on his own.
Among those against the gesture is Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Galleries, who told La Repubblica that "just like it was a mistake to cover the statues of the Capitoline Museums for the visit of the Iranian president in 2016, for alleged reasons of modesty, it is also a mistake now."
Schmidt added that to cover statues, "for whatever reason, is tantamount to censorship, and therefore is opposed to the foundations of a free society.”
The burning of the drape around David occurred on the eve of a major pro-Ukraine rally in Florence, a city twinned with the Ukrainian capital Kyiv since 1967.
The replica of David, sculpted by Luigi Arrighetti, was placed in Piazza della Signoria in 1910 after Michelangelo's original masterpiece was moved indoors to the Galleria dell'Accademia in 1873.
The three Pietà sculptures by Michelangelo are currently on display together for the first time in an exhibition at the Museo Opera del Duomo in Florence, until 1 August 2022.
Posts: 14657 | Location: Wine Country | Registered: September 20, 2000
Serial defacer. God knows what was going through his mind. The statue has always been controversial in that it features full frontal nudity. Sounds like he had other issues.
Posts: 17243 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015
.I guess Italy like the US, has misplaced compassion and doesn't lock-up its dangerously mentally ill.
^^^^^^^^ The US has inpatient facilites for those that are mentally ill. Sadly, they are our nation's prison system where they get little in the way of help. Visit any Federal or State prison and at least a quarter of the inmates are mentally ill.
Posts: 17243 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015
The copy of Michelangelo’s David in piazza della Signoria was damaged on March 11, with repairs to cost 15 thousand euro. The statue located in front of Palazzo Vecchio had been covered with a black cloth on March 6, the anniversary of Michelangelo’s birthday, in a symbolic gesture to convey Florence’s pain at the situation in Kyiv, a twinned city.
The black cloth was lit on fire by Vaclav Pisvejc, with technicians inspecting the damage on March 12, discovering extensive blackening on the statue that must be cleaned using specific solvents, with works expected to last a week.
The copy was made in 1910 by Luigi Arrighetti, and had already been set to be fully restored with funding from the Ferragamo maison through the art bonus, planned to begin in a few weeks time. Valcav Pisvejc has already conducted other acts of vandalism in Florence: he painted Francesco Vezzoli‘s lion in piazza della Signoria in blue and yellow on March 8, and wrote Putin on the central strip of a ‘No entry’ road sign in via della Vigna Nuova. He has also been in the media for having smashed a picture over the artist Marina Abramović at Palazzo Strozzi in 2018.
Vaclav committed the crime at 8pm on March 11, and was arrested for arson upon immediate intervention by the guards on duty in the square, with fire extinguishers putting out the flames.
Posts: 14657 | Location: Wine Country | Registered: September 20, 2000
I think this guy needs to be serially defaced at least to the point you can tell it’s him walking from a distance. Then arrest him before any harm done.
"The days are stacked against what we think we are." Jim Harrison
Posts: 1120 | Location: Ann Arbor | Registered: September 07, 2011
