Iranian President Hasan Rouhani has been greeted with ugly white plywood boxes in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, lest his sentiments be offended. The museum’s world famous antiquity artwork has been covered up because the statues depict the naked human form.
The Italian gesture of (misplaced, perhaps) hospitality has been met with international criticism. In light of the controversial nuclear deal with Iran that has seen sanctions on the country lifted, an Italian member of parliament said that the government’s decision bordered on the obsequious and submissive. Nervana Mahmoud, a writer who blogs about the Middle East, has called it a “shambolic appeasement of Islamism.”
What people are forgetting is that while the situation in Rome may be absurd, it is hardly unique. This is the second time in recent months that Italy has covered up its statues: When the crown prince of Abu Dhabi visited Florence in October, a statue of a nude man by American artist Jeff Koons had a windbreaker placed around it to protect its ‘modesty’.
The prudishness surrounding nude statues is not limited to the Islamic world. Americans, too have been known to be offended by statues of naked people. A garden centre in Tennesse in 2004 covered up a number of classical-style nude statues with “two piece velvet sarongs.” In 2002, the US Justice Department reportedly spent $8,000 on curtains to prevent a number of nude statues from appearing in photo ops, only to have them removed in 2005. There were calls, ultimately unheeded, to clothe two nude statues outside the entrance of the LA Coliseum ahead of the 1996 Olympic games.
As for the plywood boxes in the Capitoline Museum, the Iranians are just as surprised as anyone else.
“All I can say is that Italian people are very hospitable,” Rouhani told reporters, according to the Italian news agency ANSA. “They try to do everything to put you at ease and I thank you for this.”
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