A better solution to the “veiled statue” problem

January 28, 2016 • 9:40 am

Here’s a tw**t from Muhamad Syed about the Italian government’s covering nude statues with boxes during Iranian President Rouhani’s visit to a museum, action taken lest his Islamic scruples be offended. I’m sure you can understand the Italian, but you don’t even need to:

The French had a similar decision to make when Rouhani visited Paris last year. He said he wouldn’t dine with French President Hollande unless they served halal meat and—horrors!—didn’t serve wine. That was too much for the French, and they canceled the dinner. After all, Rouhani didn’t have to drink the wine, and France is an explicitly secular nation. But the Italians, residents of a more religious country, not only covered up their statues, but decided not to serve alcohol during meals.

37 thoughts on “A better solution to the “veiled statue” problem”

    1. They should have eaten pork – the pig was probably first domesticated in the Middle East, modern Iraq/Iran!

  3. Yet even David has a fig leaf. The ancient Romans & Greeks had a much more honest attitude to the body. 😉

  4. Please have the Indian PM visit Italy. He is a vegetarian and a teetotaler, and I hope Italians respect his feelings and have a non-alcoholic vegetarian dinner to not offend Modi’s feelings.

    1. I don’t know Modi, but is there any indication that he would be offended so long as he, personally, was given a vegetarian non-alcoholic option?

      cr

  5. That’s just it with islam: When one visits them, one abides by their rules and when they visit you, you abide by their rules. Controlling little a-holes, they act like children. Your house, your rules. My house, my rules.

  6. People who have dietary issues handle eating out smoothly. If they do not drink they simply tell the wine server “no thanks”. If there are items on the plate they do not eat, the eat the other things. While a host might make sure that there are enough choices for all,I have never heard of a guest dictating that the rest of the diner party was to follow their dietary rules. This is ridiculous.

    2. You’ve never heard of entire schools banning the humble peanut because of one child’s peanut allergy?
      Now, I accept that’s more for a safety reason – anaphylaxis is scary stuff – and much more justifiable than just someone’s philosophical opinion. But it is directly comparable to your “a guest dictating that the rest of the diner party was to follow their dietary rules” situation.

  7. Years ago, while working on a PhD in Art History (specializing in Roman Baroque church architecture) I learned that nude statues exhibited in the Vatican Museums all have their genitals removed; those genitals are stored in carefully labeled boxes, and are replaced with fig leaves. If a bona fide art historian wishes to view the statues in their original form, the curator will remove the fig leaf, find the appropriate set of genitals, and temporarily replace them, purely for academic research purposes.
    I’m not making this up! Imagine, shelves of boxes in the Vatican, each box holding a set of genitalia. Priceless.

      1. “Holy Father, Holy Father!”
        Yes, my son?
        “Another 1000 people have left the encircling arms of Mother Church this month. We have to release another set of balls from the archives.”
        Oh, Damn. OK, but not the big David, please.
        There’s a sketch in there somewhere.
        But … I feel something dubious in the original claim.

        I learned that nude statues exhibited in the Vatican Museums all have their genitals removed;

        That can’t have been much before the Regency/ Georgian period – say 1820. What did they do the cutting with? A hand-held angle grinder? A dentist’s drill and burr? I’m not sure there was a cutting technology available at that time to do that task. At least, not under sufficient control to have a realistic chance of putting them back.
        Which would make a putative archive of dangly bits in the room next to the Porn Store the lucky survivors, not a planned event.

        1. I believe there were highly skilled sculptors back then; certainly, if they can carve the statues, they can alter the statues.

          1. I’m not disputing the skill of the sculptor, I’m questioning the availability of tools.
            Cutting a 1mm thin slit some 30 to 50mm deep into the crotch of a statue in order to “remove” a part of the statue with minimal damage would be a challenging undertaking today. Every larger slot you make, the more of the original you destroy. (Plus, getting access to the site is generally somewhat restricted. So you’re going to have fun getting the tools in place.)
            Smashing the “bits” off, carving a socket, and then carving a replacement set of “bits” and an interchangeable socketed fig leaf would be a very different operation. And if the “marble” was anything less than perfectly homogeneous (which is absolutely top-notch Carrera – if you ignore the faint compositional banding and the preferred orientation of calcite twin planes), you’d have to match inhomogeneity.
            Just because I’m a geologist, not an art historian, doesn’t mean that I can’t look closely at the rocks of statues without ignoring the shapes they’re carved into.

        2. No, Aidan, I defer to your expertise in all things geology but theology trumps rocks here. The RCC called in the Skoptsy, the Christian experts in the mining of dangly bits.

          It all derives from a little-known but ultimately tragic mistranslation from the Codex Bezae version of Matthew 25:13, “How shall the sons of God remain clean but to cut themselves off from the genitals?” Biblical scholars agree that the Codex Vaticanus version is more reliable and should read ‘gentiles’. x

          1. So, did they actually smash them off. Or cut them sufficiently delicately so that they could be re-attached later?
            It’s the idea of the room of detached dangly bits that I find incredible (literally). The idea of religious barbarians smashing up works of art is nothing incredible. But being able to do it in a repairable manner is another question.
            Same question from a different end of the telescope : the care and planning that goes into lifting an archaeological relic is … something. Three hours discussion and planning for one spear tip, when I was volunteering on the dig on Skye.

          2. Shouldn’t we be talking up the “gentiles” mistranslation? Chopped off dangly bits generate no more children – who are likely to be brainwashed into the cult.

          3. Now I’m confused, Aidan: my cod biblical scholarship is a joke. And I’m not sure whether you’re going along with it dead-pan or not!

            I do hope you’re wrong about the RCC not having the tools to excommunicate the statues’ tools: but you seem, disappointingly, to be right. An apocryphal stash of marble members in some Vatican chamber is a great image, though but. x

    2. “Imagine, shelves of boxes in the Vatican”

      There’s a famous phallic rooster being kept in their museum, as well.

      I’m also reminded of the phalli in the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza which are set in long rows along the entablature of temples.

  9. Outrageous. Although Italy is a religious country the culture (film, TV, music, fine arts, etc.) does not bend for the vatican. Italian entertainment is much more violent and erotic than anything in mainstream U.S. culture. The Iranian scumwad should be blindfolded his entire visit and supplied with a mean-ass seeing-eye dog. These barbaric cavemen need to know loud and clear that the west will not tolerate their disgusting backward ways. The secular societies are still struggling with the remains of puritanical freaks, we don’t need to tiptoe to this eastern blast from the past. I stand for zero tolerance of mystic customs and beliefs.

    1. supplied with a mean-ass seeing-eye dog.

      You know those dogs who grow up thinking that the appropriate way to greet anyone – canine or human – is to sniff their crotch. I’m sure there are some dogs who pass out of the side door of seeing-eye school for this reason. Just the dog! Good boy! Sausages! Pork sausages!

  10. My feeling on the thing is – If the Iranians are arrogant enough to ask a country they are visiting to hide or cover the culture, the Italians should simply and flatly refuse. If something in someone else’s country will offend you…don’t get on the airplane.

  11. Let me be the devil’s advocate. If I invite a pious Muslim, or at least a person pretending to be one, I’d take care to have no pork or alcohol on the table. I don’t like Islam AND most people believing and practicing it, but it seems to me that the proper time and place to express my opinion isn’t when a Muslim is my guest.
    I am a European, we don’t eat d*gs. It’s not even a religious taboo, just cultural. I know that d*gs are traditional food in some Asian cultures, and I have no problem with this. In fact, if I visit such a country, I may venture to try such a dish. However, I’d wish to have full control over the situation. If I am invited by a local to a dinner, I’d feel offended if he offers me a cooked d*g; moreover, I’d expect him to take care that no d*g head is looking at me from any plate (unless all other eatable animals have suddenly died out).
    Someone above suggested what if the vegetarian Indian PM comes – I think the same is valid: prepare a vegetarian dinner.
    A friend with whom I discussed the Iranian-French controversy said, “The crux was that, for the French, wine is not just a drink but a pillar of their culture.” I agreed. In this situation, cancelling the dinner was the right thing to do.
    As for the Italians, they could invite their guest to a museum of natural history.

    1. As for the Italians, they could invite their guest to a museum of natural history.

      After putting pantaloons and burkas on all the specimens?

  12. As I understood it, the Italians had just entered into a huge financial arrangement with the Iranian government.

    Clearly the billions involved outweigh any sense of pride the Italians may have.

  13. I have a mental image of a tool for the Presidential Protection guards (who I’m sure are Iranian special forces. Imagine an array of about 16 large Fresnel lenses (the cheap plastic sheet moulded ones – here you go – mounted into a frame about a metre square. When the eye is about to be offended, the screen gets raised to protect the President from offence. Prefect solution!

  14. As between the French and Italians on this question, Vive la France! (In honor of our frères-in-arms, I’m stirred to link to the scene from Casablanca in which the Free French drown out the Nazis by singing La Marseillaise.)

    Censorship, fini! Theocracy, fini! Rouhani, fini!

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