Two Belgian climate activists who last week attacked Johannes Vermeer’s famous painting Girl with a Pearl Earring have been sentenced to two months in prison by a Dutch court.
To emphasize that seeing destroyed artworks evokes a similar emotion to seeing the destroyed planet, an activist taped his head to the glass covering the famous painting at a museum in The Hague, even though the artwork was undamaged, gallery officials said.
“A work of art that hung there for everyone, for all of us, was besmirched by defendants who felt its message took precedence over everything else,” the prosecutor said.
Prosecutors asked for four months, but the judge said she didn’t want her sentence to discourage others from demonstrating.
The two men were subjected to an accelerated trial for vandalism and open violence against the painting. A third activist who disagreed with the trial speeding up will appear in court on Friday.
All are part of the Just Stop Oil activist group from Belgium, which is not affiliated with Just Top Oil from the UK. The Belgian Just Top Oil called the verdict “ironic”.
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