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Tourist Snaps Toes Off Statue While Posing for Picture in Italian Museum

A man snapped the toes off a 200-year-old plaster cast statue while posing for a picture at a museum in Possagno, Italy, on July 31, authorities reported, sharing video of the incident.

Police said that they had identified an Austrian tourist as a suspect. A court in Treviso was deciding whether or not to press charges, CNN reported.

Surveillance footage provided by the police shows a man leaning on a plaster cast model of Antonio Canova’s statue of Paolina Bonaparte while someone takes a photo of him. A photo shows the toes snapped off. The statue was an original plaster cast model, made in 1804, for the marble sculpture of Paolina Bonaparte housed at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, The Art Newspaper reported.

The Gypsotheca Museum said that the man turned himself in on August 4. Credit: Carabinieri Treviso via Storyful