The piece, by artist Laika, was sullied with pink paint sprayed over the Italian champion’s skin.
Members of the government and opposition condemned the episode on Tuesday.
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani expressed “solidarity and the most total disdain for this grave gesture of vulgar racism,” writing that Egonu is “our pride” on X.
Elisabetta Lancellotta, a lawmaker for Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and national councillor of Italian Olympic committee CONI, was bewildered by the vandalism.
Lancellotta said she had “a hard time believing that in 2024, in Italy, someone can be bothered by the mural of a champion who has just led our national [volleyball] team to win, for the first time, an Olympic gold for Italy”.
Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri slammed it as a “shame” and an “insult to a great Italian”.
Meanwhile, another Democratic Party member, Annalisa Corrado, called the perpetrators “cowards who play outside the rules, their faces covered”.
“There is something, however, which they can’t hide: deep ignorance, spite for an evolving world and for an inclusion that progresses in spite of them and their very dangerous desire to abuse others that only brings tragedies,” Corrado noted.
Five-Star Movement lawmaker Agostino Santillo said it “will certainly not be the stupidity of an individual manifesting their discomfort that obfuscates the achievements of Italian champion Paola Egonu”.
The installation, called Italian-ness, was meant to not only celebrate the gold medal won by the women’s volleyball team at the Paris Olympics, but also to promote the battle against racism.
ANSA
