On Wednesday, a pair of scantily clad young women posed for a photo in front of Botticelli’s Venus at the Uffizi Gallery, in hopes of boosting their traffic as social-media influencers, and ultimately sparking a furore.
“Botticelli’s Venus can’t be used like this for an indecent stunt, and I’m surprised the custodians didn’t even notice, or that the matter wasn’t brought to Director Eike Schmidt’s attention,” said Florence city council Fratelli D’Italia (FdI) whip Alessandro Draghi, calling for the “offensive images to be taken down.”
The famous museum said it moved swiftly to rectify the situation.
“This morning the images were immediately reported, and the museum immediately took action to request that the unauthorised images be removed from Instagram,” the Uffizi Gallery said.
“Clearly these two people entered the museum with their jackets closed, and they had a careful look around and opened them up while remaining out of the line of vision of the guards.
“They would have been escorted out of the museum (if they had been seen), as has happened in the rare similar cases that have happened over the last few years.”
