A pinecone from a museum garden has left a mark on one of René Magritte’s best-known paintings.
The Israel Museum in Jerusalem is restoring The Castle of the Pyrenees (1959) after a child punctured the Surrealist canvas during a family visit several weeks ago. According to reports, the boy found the pinecone in the museum garden before approaching the work and piercing it. The museum has not said how long the painting will remain off view.
Sharon Tager, the museum’s head of conservation, said the treatment will focus on the paint layers and the canvas itself. “We’re experienced in conserving paintings and objects that arrive in poor condition, including works that have been stored since the Holocaust period,” she told Haaretz.
Magritte’s painting, which shows a massive boulder topped by a castle suspended above a rough sea, has an origin story as unusual as its image. In the 1950s, the New York lawyer Harry Torczyne wanted to hide an unattractive view from his office window and asked one of his clients to create a painting for the purpose. That client was Magritte, and the result became The Castle of the Pyrenees.
The incident also recalls a separate case last year, when a child caused small scratches on Mark Rothko’s Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 (1960) at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The work was on view in the Depot, the museum’s publicly accessible storage facility beside the main building.
For museums, the episode is a reminder that conservation and security now extend well beyond the gallery wall. Even a single object picked up outdoors can become a threat to a work that has survived for decades.
