Restoration of One of Queen Elizabeth's Paintings Reveals a Man Taking a Dump
In DepthWhen you own an extensive art collection—as does Queen Elizabeth II—you’ll occasionally need to send a couple of pieces out for some restoration work. Which is how conservators uncovered a man popping a squat and taking a poop in the corner of a 17th century Dutch painting that once belonged to George IV.
Smithsonian.com reports on this amusing bit of news from the Royal Collection Trust (which manages the crown’s art). A Village Fair with a Church Behind by Isack van Ostade was originally painted in 1673 and once hung in the Prince Regent’s famously over-the-top London home. As the announcement from the Trust puts it, with charming acidity: “Inventories of Carlton House in the Royal Archives show that the coarse, comic depictions of peasant life in A Village Fair with a Church Behind would have been entirely to the future king’s taste.”