(ANSA) - A stone bee, sculpted on a central Roman fountain by Italian baroque maestro Gian Lorenzo Bernini, is the latest victim of the city's statue vandals.
The bee, one of three on the so-called 'Fontana delle Api' (Bee Fountain) at the beginning of the chic Via Veneto, has been decapitated and its head taken away, presumably as a souvenir.
It is a frustrating yet familiar scenario for Romans who love the many statues and sculptures that grace their city, reminding residents and tourists of its glorious artistic heritage.
This case is especially aggravating for authorities because the very same bee had its head sliced off a year ago. Council experts studied photographs, made a replica and attached it only two months ago. "Who can it have been?" Rome daily Il Messaggero asked forlornly under photos of the maimed marble insect. "The same person as last time or someone else? Is it vandalism or a
stone bee collector?"
Bernini, considered the greatest exponent of the Italian baroque, sculpted the bee fountain in 1644, 13 years before he started work on the famous colonnade in front of St Peter's Basilica. The design of the fountain, commissioned by Pope Urban VIII, features a large shell and three bees, the symbol of the pontiff's noble family, the Barberinis. The latest incident involving one of Bernini's works is the latest in a long sequence of vandalism involving Rome's statues, many of which are in unprotected positions.
The council is waging an ongoing battle over the dozens of marble busts of famous Italians which stand in the nearby Pincio park. As fast as experts can clean and repair them, they gather new graffiti or lose their noses. Usually the vandals leave the more important works alone.
But this is not always true. In 1997 two Romans splashing about in Bernini's famous Four Rivers fountain in Piazza Navona broke off the tail of a dragon. Italy's art heritage has come under attack from vandals many times over the years. The most notorious incident was in May 1972 when a Hungarian man badly disfigured Michelangelo's Pieta' in St Peter's with a hammer.
A failed Italian painter, Pietro Cannata has made a habit of vandalising art works, hacking off a toe of Michelangelo's David in 1991, scribbling with indelible ink on a Florence museum statue in 2000 and last year splashing black paint on a monument to war dead in Prato.
