MOSCOW — One of Russia’s most famous paintings, which depicts the czar Ivan the Terrible cradling his dying son, has been badly damaged in a Moscow gallery after a man drank vodka and attacked it with a metal pole, the police said. The 1885 canvas, “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16, 1581,” by the Russian realist Ilya Repin, portrays a grief-stricken Ivan holding his son after dealing him a mortal blow, an event whose veracity some Russian nationalists dispute. The Tretyakov Gallery in central Moscow said a man had attacked the canvas just before closing time on Friday. The thick glass “was smashed,” the gallery said in a statement. “Serious damage was done to the painting.

Source: New York Times May 27, 2018 10:18 UTC