On the morning of March 10, 1914, a quiet woman in a heavy winter coat walked into Room 19 of London’s National Gallery. She stopped right in front of Diego Velázquez’s 1651 masterpiece, The Rokeby Venus—the only surviving female nude painted by the Spanish master. Without warning, she reached into her sleeve, pulled out a butcher’s meat cleaver, and slammed it straight into the canvas.
Before guards could cross the room, she had smashed the protective glass and hacked seven jagged slashes across Venus’s back and shoulders. That woman was Mary Richardson, and her violent protest sent shockwaves through Edwardian Britain.
"You Can Get Another Picture, But You Cannot Get a Life"
Why target one of the most celebrated oil paintings in European history? The answer lay in the brutal politics of the British women's suffrage movement.
Just one day earlier, Emmeline Pankhurst—leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU)—had been arrested in Glasgow. Pankhurst was being held under the infamous "Cat and Mouse Act," which allowed authorities to release hunger-striking suffragettes until their health recovered, only to re-arrest them immediately.
Richardson, a militant suffragette, decided to hit the state where it hurt: its cultural treasures. As police dragged her out of the gallery, she shouted to horrified onlookers:
"You can get another picture, but you cannot get a life, as they are killing Mrs. Pankhurst!"
In a formal statement issued from her jail cell, Richardson explained her choice of target with striking clarity:
"I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas."
Chaos in the Gallery
Museum attendant William Lawson and a plainclothes detective tackled Richardson to the marble floor just as she delivered her final blow. By then, the damage was done. Long, razor-sharp cuts gaped across the nude canvas, slicing through the delicate glaze of Venus’s back.
The backlash was instant. Newspapers labeled Richardson "Slasher Mary." The National Gallery immediately shut its doors to the public, and several major British museums banned women from entering unless accompanied by a responsible male chaperone.
Richardson was tried at Bow Street Magistrates' Court and sentenced to six months in prison—the maximum penalty allowed for artwork destruction. Undeterred, she immediately went on a hunger strike inside Holloway Prison.
An Invisible Restoration
While public outrage swirled, National Gallery conservators went to work on the damaged masterpiece. Chief restorers carefully relined the original canvas with a fresh structural backing, aligned the severed threads under magnification, and meticulously retouched the paint layers.
The restoration was so successful that when the painting returned to display, visitors could barely spot where the cleaver had struck. Today, millions of people admire the masterpiece at the National Gallery in London, completely unaware of the violent morning that nearly destroyed it over a century ago.
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