Climate activists in Italy were dragged away by museum staff after they glued their hands to a 540-year-old Botticelli painting, video shows
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Katie Balevic
Jul 27, 2022, 03:19 IST
Protestors from the action group Ultima Generazione glue their hands to the glass covering Sandro Botticelli's La Primavera at Uffizi on July 22, 2022 in Florence, Italy.Laura Lezza/Getty Images
Two climate activists glued their hands to the protective glass of the iconic "Primavera" painting.
A video showed the activists being dragged away by staff at the Uffizi Gallery in Italy.
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Climate activists were dragged away by museum staff in Italy after they glued their hands to Sandro Botticelli's iconic "Primavera" painting.
A video of the incident posted to Twitter shows two protestors that each glued their right hands onto the protective glass covering the Botticelli painting at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. The painting is over 540 years old, believed to be completed around 1480.
A third person helped the protesters unravel a banner that said "Ultima Generazione No Gas No Carbone" or "Last Generation, No Gas, No Coal," The Guardian reported.
The two activists near the painting were later dragged away by museum staff, according to the BBC. A video shows the pair going limp and lying on the ground as they were dragged away.
The activist group Ultima Generazione tweeted videos of the incident and claimed responsibility for the demonstration.
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—Ultima Generazione (@UltimaGenerazi1) July 22, 2022
"Many criticize our actions because 'we should leave museums in peace,'" the group tweeted. "Maybe they don't understand that the inconvenience we created is nothing compared to 1 billion climate migrants and to the many deaths that the climate crisis is causing already."
In a statement on their website, Ultima Generazione said their demonstration was an act of "nonviolent civil disobedience to continue to put pressure on the government to make more courageous choices to face the climatic and social collapse underway," according to a translation.
Two women and one man were detained by police following the incident, according to The Guardian. They face multiple charges including defacing property and staging an unauthorized demonstration, according to the magazine Wanted In Rome.
A spokesperson for the Uffizi Gallery told Insider that the incident lasted about 30 minutes.
"If there had not been the special protections glasses for the main masterpieces of the museum decided a few years ago by the direction, today we would have had a real damage to the work, as happened recently in other museums on the occasion of similar protests," press officer Tommaso Galligani said.
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Similar acts of protest have been reported in Europe before. In May, a man disguised as an elderly woman smeared Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" with a pastry. The activist said he did it because people "are destroying the planet."
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