Monet Worth $12 Million is Repaired After Man Punches a Hole Through It



A man named Andrew Shannon visited The National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin on June 29, 2012. Once inside, Shannon walked up to a Monet painting worth $12 million and punched a hole clean through the canvas. Immediately afterward, Shannon screamed at those in the museum who witnessed the incident, telling them to stay away from him because he had a heart condition. Shannon claimed later that he "felt faint" and had fallen into the painting.

A museum security guard restrained Shannon immediately after the incident, finding a can of paint stripper on him in the process. Security cameras caught the crime on video; after a jury viewed the footage last month, they deliberated for only 90 minutes before returning with a guilty verdict. Shannon was sentenced to five years in jail for defacing the painting, entitled Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat and created in 1874. 

When Andrew Shannon's home was raided by police, they found other stolen art pieces worth nearly $150,000. Some of the thefts dated back to the 1980s. A source at the Dublin Crown Court told the Irish Mirror,

“Shannon was a big threat to society, He has a corrupt perversion of the mind, [he is] a complete sociopath."

Restoration experts set to work on the process of repairing the painting, a complicated operation that took 18 months. The lengthy reconstruction began with laying the painting flat, paint side down on a layer of tissue to protect it. The canvas was removed from the frame and the torn section had to be aligned and rejoined in a painstaking, multi-step procedure involving a high-powered microscope.  

Read about the repair in detail and see photos of each step, as well as the finished restoration, here.

Images: The National Gallery of Ireland 


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Katherine, I've updated the story with more information about Andrew Shannon, including the circumstances at the museum and the comments he made there and afterward. He never gave a reason for committing the crime because he denied defacing the painting on purpose. I appreciate your comment. Thanks for reading.
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