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LONDON - Staff and customers of a Soho sex shop had something new to look at yesterday: a life-sized reproduction of a Caravaggio painting that had been hung up outside the establishment overnight.
The high-quality digital copy of Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist, hangs a whisker's breadth away from the Harmony sex shop, in a gilt frame.
It is just one of 45 high-quality reproductions of masterpieces by the likes of Rubens, Titian and Monet, that have been displayed in the streets of central London by the National Gallery in an effort to bring art to a new urban audience.
For the next three months, pedestrians will come across this "urban intervention" as part of an initiative called "The Grand Tour", which is aimed at "getting the public to look and think about art", according to the gallery.
The gallery has created a map marking the locations of all the works, with themed tours that cater for lovers, or take in the more "heavy-hitting" works by Titian, Seurat, and Van Eyck.
Andy Holmes, a courier, did just that, halting his bike abruptly in front of a reproduction of Rubens' painting, Samson and Delilah, which is hung opposite a pub off Carnaby Street.
Other works on show included Da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks, displayed in a side road off Regents St, Bermejo's St Michael Triumphs over the Devil, outside the London Fire Station on Shaftesbury Ave, and Stubbs' equestrian portrait, Whistlejacket, hung outside the Palace Theatre, which is currently showing Spamalot.
Two members of staff at Harmony's thought the Caravaggio painting - depicting a New Testament story of Salome who requests the head of John the Baptist on a plate - fitted its new surroundings rather well.
"It's not a bad location for it. There were prostitutes in the Bible after all, and you'll find plenty here," said one worker.
The initiative is an inversion of a prank by the graffiti artist, Banksy, who hung his own work at the National Gallery a few years ago.
Charles Saumarez Smith, director of the National Gallery, said the project came about through the gallery's desire to "democratise" art.
"These paintings represent the most popular works in the National Gallery and in bringing them out on the streets, we have sought to democratise the experience of art. It's a way of getting people to look and think about the works of artists outside the gallery itself," he said.
The works are said to be graffiti-proof - and difficult to steal.
- INDEPENDENT
