The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow has reopened after a massive restoration that took six years to complete. The theater is open in all its glory–aside from one, uh, small detail.
A statue of Apollo riding a chariot–formerly a nude–has been given a makeover: the Sun God now has a fig leaf covering up his schmeckle. According to The Telegraph:
“The theatre’s restorers have insisted that they have merely restored the landmark statue to its original glory. Its original sculptor, Pyotr Klodt, had made a fig leaf for the statue in the nineteenth century to spare theatre-goers blushes, they claimed, but the leaf had ‘fallen off’ in unclear circumstances sometime after the Second World War to reveal the mythical God’s penis.”
We hate it when that happens.
Apollo’s penis “loomed over central Moscow for much of the Soviet era.” People have questioned why the sculptor would have bothered making a penis if it was ultimately meant to be covered. Maybe he had a strong attention to detail?