Boy trips in museum and punches hole through painting – Trending Stuff

A close-up view of the puncture in the canvas. Photograph: TST Art of Discovery Co

The exhibition, which also includes portraits of Leonardo, shows 55 paintings in Taiwan gathered from the finest art collectors in the world, according to the organisers.

All 55 paintings in the venue are authentic pieces and they are very rare and precious, a post on the exhibitions Facebook page said. Once these works are damaged, they are permanently damaged.

Porpora was a leading still life artist who produced baroque-style paintings, often of fruit and flowers. The damaged work, 200cm tall, depicts flowers in a vase.

Sun dismissed later reports in Taiwanese media that the damaged art might in fact be a painting from another 17th-century Italian painter, Mario Nuzzi, valued only at about 30,000 (22,000).

There is nothing to respond to. Of course they are different, he was quoted in Focus Taiwan news as saying.

The Web Gallery of Art, a database of European fine art, said Flowers was the only Porpora work that is signed and was painted in about 1660. Porpora was born in Naples but moved to Rome, where he worked for the Chigi family.

Tsai Shun-Jen, the chief conservator, said the painting was very fragile due to its age. When we start working on the paintings restoration, the priority is to strengthen its structure, not retouching the paint on the damaged area, he said.