Watch: Tourists break crystal chair while posing for photos
A pair of tourists have broken a crystal-covered chair inspired by Vincent van Gogh.
Footage released by the Palazzo Maffei in Verona shows a man and a woman pretending to sit on the artwork and posing for photos.
The man stumbles mid-squat and falls back onto the 'extremely fragile' piece by the artist Nicola Bolla, causing the seat to buckle.
After the man is helped to his feet, the couple scarper from the room.
The Italian museum has since made a complaint to the police, saying the pair had fled. It is understood that the incident happened in April and the pair have not been identified.
Vanessa Carlon, the museum's director, said: 'Sometimes we lose our brains to take a picture and we don't think about the consequences.
'Of course it was an accident, but these two people left without speaking to us – that isn't an accident.'
Ms Carlon said the pair had waited for staff to leave the room before seizing the opportunity to take the picture.
'What you just saw would be ridiculous if it hadn't, unfortunately, actually happened. The ultimate nightmare for any museum,' she added.
The chair has since been repaired.
'Idiotic thing to do'
Mr Bolla, who was born in Saluzzo, was inspired by Van Gogh's 1888 painting 'Van Gogh's Chair', which took as its subject a humble wooden chair on a tile floor.
His version, created between 2006 and 2007, is coated with hundreds of Swarovski crystals.
'It was an idiotic thing to do,' he told the Italian magazine Fanpage, but conceded that he could see positives from the episode.
'It's like a kind of performance. Ordinary people can do it too, not just artists.'
Carlotta Menegazzo, an art historian based at the Palazzo Maffei, said the chair was actually hollow and kept together by foil.
'On the chair was a note warning people not to touch, and of course it is placed on a pedestal, so it's quite clear it's not a real chair,' she said.
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