Italy's 'Venus of the Rags' art installation in Naples destroyed by arson

July 12 (UPI) -- A suspected arson attack has destroyed the "Venus of the Rags" art installation outside of Naples' City Hall in Italy, burning it to its frame just two weeks after it was installed.

According to police investigators, the fire broke out at dawn Wednesday and was quickly extinguished. The giant plaster sculpture of Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty standing before a pile of rags and old clothes in a commentary on waste, was destroyed except for its frame.

Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi told reporters that investigators will find who set the fire and will rebuild the sculpture created by contemporary Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto.

"We will launch a fundraiser to ensure that this reconstruction also takes place with popular participation," Manfredi said, while expressing "dismay for an act of great violence, which leaves us speechless."

"Vandalism will not stop art," Manfredi added.

Police are still looking into a motive for the sculpture's destruction. Artwork in museums have been targeted by climate activists in the past several years, including recently in Stockholm where a Monet was smeared with red paint and in Washington, D.C., where a Degas sculpture was targeted at the National Gallery of Art.

Pistoletto, who is 90, has created numerous versions of the "Venus of the Rags" sculpture since 1967 and which can be seen at museums and galleries around the world. The installation in Naples was one of his largest and was unveiled June 28.

"Considered one of the most iconic works of the twentieth century and one of the artist's most emblematic, the 'Venus of the Rags' stages the contrast between the still beauty of the classical tradition and the transience of the contemporary," the Naples government said in a press release last month.

Pistoletto blamed a "world going up in flames" for Wednesday's destruction of his artwork, adding that he was not surprised it was targeted.

"It is a work that calls for regeneration, on the necessity to find a balance and harmony between two minds that are represented on the one hand by beauty, and on the other by consummate consumerism, a disaster," Pistoletto said.

"The world is going up in flames anyway. The same spirits that are waging war are the ones that set the Venus on fire."