Between 1913 and 2022, twelve famous works were slashed, punched, splashed or shot at where they hung, among them The Night Watch, Guernica, the Mona Lisa and Van Gogh's Sunflowers.
A rope, an attendant and often a pane of glass guard a painting on display. In these twelve attacks, that was not enough. Some pictures came through untouched. A red canvas by Barnett Newman lost most of its original red to its restorer, not to the man who slashed it.
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How These Were Chosen
A gallery lets visitors stand within reach of famous pictures, and the harm is done in seconds. The motives behind these attacks range from politics and climate protest to private grievance and illness.
Eleven of the twelve works are paintings. The twelfth, Leonardo's Burlington House Cartoon, is a large drawing in charcoal. Each attack left a mark that outlasted the day: a long repair, a trial, or new protection in front of the picture.
The list counts down from twelve to one, and it ends in London in 1914, with a suffragette and a meat cleaver.
The twelve cases also tell a story about glass. In some, a pane over the picture stopped the damage. In others, the attacker reached an unprotected canvas, and the glass in front of it today was put there afterward.
12. Claude Monet, The Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat (1874)
A single sailboat crosses a wide stretch of water, the Argenteuil basin, on the Seine just northwest of Paris. Claude Monet lived in Argenteuil for most of the 1870s and painted this view there in 1874.
The canvas hung in the National Gallery of Ireland, in Dublin, without incident until June 29, 2012. At about 11 in the morning, security cameras filmed a man walking toward it with his arm raised.
The man was Andrew Shannon, from the Ballymun district of Dublin. He punched the canvas on its left side, above eye level. He then told tourists and staff that he had a heart condition and had felt faint.
A paramedic found his vital signs normal, and medical experts later said his condition would not cause dizzy spells.
What his fist had done became clear in the conservation studio. The blow had opened a tear with three branches, and conservators counted more than a hundred loose fragments of paint. Of the paint knocked loose, about seven percent was too small to find and put back.
The repair took 18 months. First the tear was closed with an adhesive that can be removed later. Then the canvas was lined, that is, backed with a new support, in two passes, and the gaps were filled with gesso, a white chalk primer, and retouched in watercolor.
Once mended, the Monet went into a climate box, a sealed case that keeps the air around it stable, and returned to the Millennium Wing, the modern extension of the gallery, behind protective glass.
Shannon's trial came later. In December 2014, when the picture had been back on view for five months, Judge Martin Nolan sentenced him to six years, with the last 15 months suspended, and banned him from entering public art galleries.
At a Glance
Artist: Claude Monet (1840 to 1926)
Painted: 1874
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 55 × 65 cm (22 × 26 in)
Where to see it: National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
11. Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (about 1665)
Over her shoulder, a girl in a turban turns to look out of the picture. A pearl hangs from her ear, painted with almost nothing: one bright touch of white at the top, a softer reflection below, and the eye fills in the rest.
Johannes Vermeer painted the small canvas around 1665, and in The Hague it is shown behind glass. On the afternoon of October 27, 2022, three men walked into her room, and one of them went straight for that glass.