Surgical Art

After being praised as a model to follow for the “seriousness” — as its president has defined it — in the fight against the virus, Italy seems starting to get carried away and, in addition to the mouths and noses of its citizens, now it is also considering to cover the most outrageous private parts of its artworks through ratification of the Faro Convention — the multilateral Council of Europe treaty whereby states agree to protect cultural heritage and the rights of citizens to access and participate in that heritage, signed in Faro, Portugal, from which it takes its name.

The incriminated lines of the paper would be those that in article 4 read: “The exercise of the right to cultural inheritance can be subject only to those limitations that are necessary in a democratic society, for the protection of the public interest and of the rights and freedoms of others.”

The Minister of Cultural Heritage was quick to point out that “no censorship is perpetuated in the name of this act, which rather aims at the greatest possible sharing of what we have inherited from the civilizations that preceded us”. But, despite his satisfaction, some already talks about “cultural yield”, by considering it a further step towards the Islamization of the country. And since Italy became a model to be inspired worldwide, all penises and vaginas would be healthy and safe.