Uffizi Gallery

He feeds lire into a public scale and, shocked by the number, embarks on a starvation diet so extreme he winds up passing out near the Uffizi Gallery.

Years ago, while visiting Florence, Italy’s famed Uffizi gallery, screenwriter David Hemingson found himself captivated by the famed painting of the holy family known as the Doni Tondo.

Two climate activists on Tuesday targeted Botticelli’s masterpiece “The Birth of Venus” hanging at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, attaching images of recent flood damage in the Tuscany region on the protective glass.

Other recent protests have involved activists blocking highway traffic in various parts of Italy, and gluing hands of activists to the protective glass of a Botticelli painting in the Uffizi Gallery.

While Greco is an Italian citizen, previous centre-left governments appointed high-profile foreigners to run a few of the country's most famous sites, including Florence's Uffizi Gallery, Pompeii and Milan's Pinacoteca di Brera.