12-year-old boy trips in a museum, breaks his fall on a 350-year-old painting worth $1.5 million

Over the weekend a 12-year-old Taiwanese boy tripped over himself and accidentally punched a fist-sized hole in an extremely valuable painting, Focus Taiwan reports.

According to exhibition director Sun Chi-hsuan, the 350-year-old Paolo Porpora oil painting entitled "Flowers" is valued at $1.5 million and will now undergo restoration in Italy.

Italian artist Porpora, who is best known for his baroque-style depictions of fruit and flowers, painted the 78-inch tall canvas in the 17th century.

Here's the painting:

And here's a close up of the damage on the lower right side:

Fortunately, the work is insured and the boy's family will not be asked to assist in the restoration fees, Focus Taiwan reports.

As the Guardian notes, "the boy joins a short, cringing list of art fumblers. In 2006, a man tripped over his shoelace in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in the UK and smashed three 300-year-old Chinese vases. In 2010, a woman at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art fell into a Picasso, causing a 15 cm (6 inch) tear."

Last year, a man was sentenced to six years in prison after punching a hole through a $12.5 million Claude Monet painting in Dublin.

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