Pigeon damages 17th century artwork

21 July 2004

AMSTERDAM — A pigeon has damaged a 17th century painting by Dutch artist Thomas de Keyser in the Amsterdam Historical Museum after slipping through the automatic sliding doors to the “shooters” gallery.

The dove pecked a hole a couple of centimetres in size in the canvas “Het Korporaalschap van Kapitein Jacob Symonsz. De Vries en Luitenant Dirck de Graeff” painted in 1633.

Museum staff tried in vain to hunt the pigeon outside when they saw it was flying around the gallery passage, between the Kalverstraat and the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. One worker even spent a night in the museum to keep watch on the bird.

But when colleagues noticed the next morning that a painting had been damaged, it was decided that the pigeon needed to be shot and killed, newspaper De Telegraaf reported.

Subject: Dutch news