Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Dutch Painting Attacked

A 69-year-old man has been arrested after hurling a "caustic substance" at a 17th-century painting at The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam on Sunday. The New York Times report is here. You can see the painting, "Celebration of the Peace of Münster" (1648) by Bartholomeus van der Helst, here. Apparently the attacker is "a known vandal whose picture had been circulated among guards, but he was not recognized when he entered." It's also not the first incident of vandalism at the museum: "Another van der Helst painting at the Rijksmuseum was attacked with a knife in 1989, and in 1990 the museum's best-known painting, Rembrandt's 'Nightwatch' (1642), was sprayed with hydrochloric acid."