Boy Trips in Museum and Ruins $1.5M Painting

Worst class trip... ever. At least it was for this 12-year-old who wound up ruining a painting worth a small fortune.

The Guardian reports that the unlucky museum patron wound up falling into a 350-year-old Paolo Porpora oil on canvas work called Flowers. The painting is valued at $1.5 million. Video shows the boy holding a soda and, presumably bored out of his mind, walking past the painting.

Somehow the boy's leg hits a small barrier in front of the painting and sends him off balance, falling right into the painting and punching a fist-sized hole into the canvas. Why there was such a flimsy barrier in front of the painting is anyone's guess, but it certainly didn't do the job it was supposed to.

In the closed-circuit security video the boy appears visibly shaken after tripping into the painting. He is briefly consoled by a museum worker before apparently being led off camera. It's easy to feel sorry for the poor kid, as we've all made embarrassing falls in front of large groups. Fortunately, they don't usually end in millions of dollars worth of damages.

The good news is that the clumsy student in the video isn't on the hook for the damages. The museum's insurance will be covering the cost of repairs to the painting.

Have you ever broken something terribly expensive? How did you react? Did you have to pay for the damages?