A fresco resembling the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has caused a right rumpus in Italy. The La Repubblica newspaper spotted the angel with a face resembling the right-wing Italian politician in the chapel of the Basilica of St Lawrence in Lucina in the heart of Rome.
The artist Bruno Valentinetti, who was restoring the work, was accused of painting the Meloni cherub but repeatedly denied making the angelic depiction. He eventually told the press: “It was Meloni, but along the lines of the painting that was there before.”
The mystery deepened when the Meloni work was removed, with Valentinetti admitting that he “covered the face because the Vatican told me to. The Curia [the administrative body of the Holy See] wanted it that way, and I erased it.”
The Five Star Movement, a political party opposed to Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party, meanwhile added that art must not become “a tool for propaganda”. Who knew that a cherub could be so shocking?