Study of Two Heads by Peter Paul Rubens
This is Peter Paul Rubens's Study of Two Heads, painted in 1609 and held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It escaped destruction by acid in a German museum.
Rubens painted this oil study as a preparatory work, likely testing the expressions of Saints Peter and Paul before placing them in a larger religious scene. Peter, in the foreground, gazes upward with parted lips, a study in ecstasy or supplication. Paul peers from the shadows at the left margin, only one eye visible, a secretive witness.
On a February day in 1959 at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, a man carrying a bottle of sulfuric acid walked into the gallery. He made for this very painting. The acid burned through the canvas at its center, and when he ignited it, the fire scarred the face of Saint Peter. The painting was part of a mass attack on multiple works that day, but this one survived.
The Met acquired the study decades later after a long, careful restoration. You can still see the damage if you look at the texture of the beard and the cheek. It bears the scars of one man's fury, and of the restorers who refused to let it be lost.
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Transcript
A man walked into a Munich museum with a bottle of acid. He walked directly to this painting. He doused the center and ignited it. The face he burned was Saint Peter. The other is Saint Paul. Look closely at Peter's beard, his cheek. The scars remain. Restorers spent decades relining and retouching the canvas. Now look at the other apostle, still intact, still watching from the dark.