Milan City Council has admitted it is unable to clean a 19th-century statue that was recently defaced by climate activists and will now require complex restoration to return it to its previous state. Experts blamed the city council for apparently fixing the sprayed pigment on the monument while trying to clean it. Meanwhile, the mayor of Milan has accused climate activists of covering the statue in permanent paint.
Dominating one end of Milan’s Piazza del Duomo, Ettore Rosa’s 15m-tall bronze sculpture Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II (1878-1896) depicts the first king of Italy mounted on a horse as he rallies his troops during the Second Italian War of Independence.
Two climate activists affiliated with the group Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) approached the monument on March 9 holding red canisters attached to pipes and sprayed the statue with bright yellow paint. The activists, who have been identified as a 26-year-old man and 23-year-old woman, were arrested by Carabinieri law enforcement officers shortly after the protest.
Cleaning specialists from the waste disposal agency Amsa, funded by the city of Milan, arrived at the scene less than an hour after the demonstration and attempted to clean the monument using jets of high pressure water, according to reports. Officers were unable to immediately remove the paint.
A report sent last week by the superintendent of archaeology, fine arts and landscapes of Milan to the Italian ministry of culture concluded that the decision of the city council to use large quantities of water to remove the paint “was inappropriate and certainly ineffective”. Local journal Il Giorno claims that Amsa’s cleanup efforts “appear to have set the paintwork even more permanently.”
Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala told reporters Friday that his administration does not employ the specialized personnel necessary for the cleaning of the statue and will therefore launch a call for tenders to appoint an external restorer. “I do not believe it [the climate activists] didn’t know they were using non-removable paint,” Sala said. told reporters. Sala added that the city council could take civil action against the protesters.
A council spokesman said The arts journal a “complex” restoration project “with scaffolding” will now be required to remove the paint.
Ultima Generazione has staged many similar protests in Milan in recent months, smearing the facade of La Scala opera house in blue and pink paint in December and covering the base of a famous statue of a protruding middle finger by Maurizio Cattelan with pigment. yellow in January. The paint was successfully removed in both cases.
Ultima Generazione denied intentionally damaging the monument in Piazza del Duomo. “We used the exact same paint as in the other cases, and like the other cases, we had no intention of [permanently] damaging the work,” Ultima Generazione told the Italian news site fanpage.
Meanwhile, the Italian government last week approved a bill that would impose tougher penalties on protesters who target heritage. Under the new law, anyone who damages works of art or monuments could face fines ranging from €20,000 to €60,000; the law also provides for fines of €10,000 to €40,000 for those who damage heritage sites.
