Two Just Stop Oil protesters have smashed the glass on the Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez at the National Gallery in London. This, you might be surprised to hear, is not the first time this painting has been the target of activists.
In March 1914, a suffragette named Mary Richardson entered the National Gallery with a butcher’s knife secreted in her sleeve. She was on a mission to “destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history”. She ended up slashing the Rokeby Venus five times in the name of women’s rights.
It’s not the first time Just Stop Oil has taken a tactic from the suffragette playbook. It has been noted that their other attacks on art, like the one in October 2022 when Just Stop Oil protesters threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, draw on Richardson’s act.
