Department of Unfortunate Metaphors

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, has frequently been accused of covering up the truth. Now, it seems, his office is covering up Truth. As the NY Times reports:

The truth, in this case, refers to an 18th-century allegorical figure in a painting by Tiepolo that serves as a backdrop for government news conferences in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s official residence.

It was retouched in recent weeks to cover an exposed breast, which “might have upset the sensitivity of some viewers,” Paolo Bonaiuti, the prime minister’s spokesman, told a Milan daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, over the weekend. “That breast, that little nipple, ends up right in the shots that TVs make during press conferences.”

The cover-up sort of defeats the whole point of the painting, as an expert points out in the piece:

From an iconographic point of view, “the truth is usually depicted nude,” Ms. Bertuzzo-Lomazzi said. “It’s kind of pointless to have wanted this allegory and then to cover it up. They could have chosen another subject.”