posted by Lourdes Flores on News

All visitors to the Uffizi Gallery should expect to see some form of nudity or other in the classical Roman and Greek sculptures as well as paintings, from Botticelli’s Birth of Venus to Titian’s Venus of Urbino.

This past Saturday, visitors to the Uffizi got an unexpected display of nudity, inspired precisely by Botticell’s masterpiece. A 25-year old Spaniard, in front of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus“, quickly striped naked and proceeded to kneel and drop rose petals in front of the painting while exclaiming “Es arte, es poesia” – “it’s art, it’s poetry”!

The Uffizi Gallery director, Antonio Natali, commented: “Yes, I was told of what happened. What can I say? In a million and 900 hundred visitors a year, there are people who are disturbed, restless, passionate… and he must have suffered the syndrome of Adam….”. The director jokes as there was no damage and the custodians were quick to intervene.

The young man was calm as he dressed again and as he was accompanied out of the museum by local police. He was charged with indecent public exposure.