A man who attacked and damaged a masterpiece of Russian painting with a metal pole said he had acted for ideological reasons to rescue the reputation of a tsar, recanting an earlier confession that the vandalism was fueled by vodka.
According to Reuters, his statement is likely to add to liberal concern about the influence of religious conservatives and politicians who have turned Russia’s history into an ideological battleground to boost patriotism.
Igor Podporin, 37, has confessed to attacking one of the country’s most treasured 19th century art works, which depicts Tsar Ivan the Terrible cradling his dying son.
In an initial confession, Podporin said he became overwhelmed after drinking vodka in the cafe of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow’s most important art museum. The gallery said that the man had somehow gotten past a group of gallery employees, picked up one of the metal security poles used to keep the public back from the painting and struck its protective glass.
The gallery said in a statement: “As a result of the blows the thick glass was smashed. Serious damage was done to the painting. The canvas was pierced in three places in the central part of the work which depicts the figure of the Tsarevich (the tsar’s son).”
The frame was also badly damaged, the gallery said, but it said that “by a happy coincidence” the most precious elements of the painting, the depiction of the faces and hands of the tsar and his son, were not damaged. But in a Moscow court appearance on Tuesday, Podporin denied he had drunk vodka before the attack, and said he had acted because he objected to the painting.
“The painting is a lie,” Podporin told the court, Russian news agencies reported. “Tsar Ivan the Terrible is ranked among the community of saints.”
The damaged painting was completed by Ilya Repin in 1885 and portrays a grief-stricken tsar holding his own son in his arms after dealing him a mortal blow. But some Russian historians dispute the idea that Ivan murdered his son, and President Vladimir Putin said last year it was unclear if the tsar was guilty or not.
Ivan Melnikov, a human rights official who visited Podporin in custody, told the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid newspaper on Tuesday that Podporin had been thinking about what he regarded as the incorrect portrayal of Ivan the Terrible for two years.
“I’d heard about this painting a long time ago. Even Putin said on TV that what it depicts is not true. When I got to the Tretyakov I couldn’t stop myself. Foreigners go there and look at it. What will they think about our Russian tsar? About us? It’s a provocation against the Russian people so that people view us badly,” Podporin was quoted as telling him.
