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NAKED

Spaniard strips in front of Italian masterpiece

A Spanish tourist startled visitors to Florence's Uffizi gallery on Saturday after stripping naked in front of one of the most famous artworks of the Renaissance.

Published: 24 March 2014 10:42 CET
Spaniard strips in front of Italian masterpiece
The Spanish tourist stripped naked in front of Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus. Photo: Wikipedia

Standing in front of Sandro Botticelli’s alluring Birth of Venus, which depicts the classical goddess of love and beauty emerging from the sea and floating on a seashell, the 25-year-old man casually removed all his clothes, La Repubblica reported.

He then placed his hands in the same position as the goddess – one on his chest and the other on top of his thigh – before kneeling down and scattering rose petals across the floor.

Shocked gallery staff immediately intervened, with one attempting to cover the man with a towel while the other called the police.

One tourist took the opportunity to capture the scene on her mobile phone, with the photo then spreading quickly across Facebook and other social networks.

A commentator on Twitter posted the photo, and said: "Art makes us nake. Sometimes, literally!

The man is said to have shouted “freedom, freedom!” as he was taken away by police and later charged for an obscene act in public.

It is the second naked performance in a public place to have struck Italy this month.

READ MORE HERE: Man stripped in church 'to show God natural self' 

"I was in the corridor of the gallery when I heard a guard saying he needed help because there was a naked man in front of Venus," Susanna Mantovani, a tour guide, told La Repubblica.

"I thought it was a joke, then we walked into the room and saw him kneeling down, sprinkling petals on the floor. I saw the police talking to him, and the situation seemed peaceful."

The man was reportedly curious to know if his performance had been caught on camera, asking police, "Is it true that people took photos with their smartphones?".

The Birth of Venus, painted between 1482 and 1485, is perceived as Botticelli's most famous piece of art. It was commissioned by the Medici family of Florence.

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ART

Stuttgart lays itself bare in the name of freedom, nature and art

Naked people pretending to be giraffes standing between cars or acting like monkeys climbing trees have become a regular sight in Stuttgart this summer, due to an artistic campaign in the name of nature and freedom.

Published: 19 September 2017 16:43 CEST
Stuttgart lays itself bare in the name of freedom, nature and art
Participants in the Kessel-Safari project pretending to be mountain goats. Photo: Daniela Wolf.

Stuttgart was subject to a naked takeover on Sunday during one of several photo shoots which have taken place in the southern city throughout the summer.

The takeover was part of an artistic campaign involving students and professors from Kunstakademie Stuttgart posing au naturel in various public locations for a calendar which aims to lay bare environmental and social issues in the city.

“We think in the end, people would certainly be much better off if they went running around together in the bushes more often, instead of being stuck in a traffic jam,” the organizers Justyna Koeke and Marie Leinhard told The Local.

Artists pose on a roundabout in the city. Photo: Stuttgart Under Construction.

The art students described their project as a reaction to Stuttgart's numerous construction sites and “constant traffic stress”. The capital of Baden-Württemberg is one of the most polluted cities in the country despite being in the only German state lead by the Green Party. 

“We set about finding more freedom, more nature, more humanity” in a world which is increasingly conservative and controlled, the artists told The Local.

There is certainly a lot of humanity visible in these photos, with a distinct lack of clothing in any of the scenes.

Last year the artists similarly created a naked calendar centred around the city's many building sites. But for this project, they wanted to show “the wild side of Stuttgart”.

The 2018 calendar project, named “Kessel-Safari”, (kettle safari) isn't like any safari you've seen before.

The team from the Kunstakademie imitated various wild animals by climbing over the parks and green areas in the city and getting as close to nature as possible.

Koeke and Leinhard feel “Stuttgart has a fine, long-standing naked tradition,” while they also point out that “animals don't wear clothes”.

The artists say they hope the calendar will raise questions about whether normal citizens can have a say in the development of their city, rather than just big investors.

But they also just want to “make people laugh because naked people are pretending to be giraffes between the cars, or monkeys climbing in the trees.”

Kessel-Safari artists monkeying around in a tree in Stuttgart. Photo: Stuttgart Under Construction.

Residents of Stuttgart should be prepared for further “wild animal” sightings next week as the final three photos for the Kessel-Safari calendar are set to be shot then.