Berlusconi makes a boob in attempt to cover up Truth

The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, no stranger at getting into scrapes with both women and the truth, has now been propelled into a cover-up involving both. In a move which has left his political opponents unsure whether to laugh or cry, he has had an embarrassing nipple removed.

It is not his nipple. It belongs to a voluptuous female figure, the allegorical figure of Truth, depicted in Time Unveiling Truth, a painting by the 18th century Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

Berlusconi himself selected a huge copy of the work (above) to hang above the table where he holds his press conferences at his offices at Palazzo Chigi in Rome. The result: Truth's left breast and nipple float above the Prime Minister's head "like a halo", La Stampa has noted. But it has proved too much for him and journalists invited for the latest briefing at the palazzo suddenly realised that the offending mammary had been painted over with an extra fold of Truth's gown.

It was "an initiative of those on the staff of the Prime Minister who take care of Berlusconi’s image," confessed Paolo Bonaiuti, the PM's spin doctor as it was felt the sensibilities of some TV viewers might be offended. "The breast (and) that nipple ended up right in the shots the news bulletins used (of) the press conferences."

The explanation has caused great mirth in a land famous for unclothed figures in art and sculpture – and because Berlusconi is also a media mogul whose TV channels routinely variety shows spiced up with barely covered female flesh.

Vittorio Sgarbi, an art critic who was junior culture minister in a previous Berlusconi administration, is appalled. He said: "I truly hope the decision to carry out this absurd, crazy, pathetic, comic and useless retouching has been carried out without (Berlusconi's) knowledge.

"All the more so if the idea was to do him a favour by not associating in the public mind a boob with someone who is - how to say? – susceptible to female charm."

Last month the 71-year-old PM cancelled a TV interview in which he was due to be grilled about his relationship with Mara Carfagna, his 33-year-old equal opportunities minister who was a topless model before she became an MP. Berlusconi recently also drove a law through Parliament granting himself immunity from prosecution while in office. The law exempts him from a trial in Milan in which he is charged with allegedly giving David Mills, his former tax lawyer and the estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, the British Olympics minister, a $600,000 bribe to give misleading testimony in a corruption trial a decade ago involving alleged tax fraud by Berlusconi's Mediaset empire. Both men have denied the charge. ·