If you only saw Amedeo Modigliani's masterpiece painting "Nu Couché" -- which recently got sold to a Chinese billionaire for $170.4 million -- on TV, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's just a big blur.
The painting, which depicts a nude woman reclining on a couch, was censored in several TV streams, including those by CNBC and Bloomberg TV.
In a CNBC video, which is still available on the network's website (it's one of the linked videos, on the right), the woman's breasts and genital area are blurred.
"If only Modigliani was alive to bask in its own success," the video's narrator says. We guess he wouldn't be too happy about his work being censored.
#CNBC CENSORED Amedeo Modigliani's masterpiece after it sold at auction for a record $170M. Keep it prude, America. pic.twitter.com/RcS5jkMxo9— Rick Calmon (@rcalmon) November 10, 2015
The painting is undoctored in other videos on CNBC, as well as the station's tweets.
The painting was also blurred or censored in other places as well, including Bloomberg TV and The Financial Times, as captured on Twitter (and found by Maxim).
Bloomberg TV's war on art. pic.twitter.com/kF5l8DSV96— Ivan the K™ ️ (@IvanTheK) November 10, 2015
The Financial Times censored that filthy pornographer Modigliani on the weekend pic.twitter.com/W4jpQaOfWw— Ashleigh Wilson (@ashleighbwilson) November 8, 2015
Interestingly enough, the painting caused an uproar when it was first exhibited in Paris' Galerie Berthe Weill in 1918, prompting the police to shut the gallery down. It seems little has changed in the last hundred years.
A similar incident ocurred in May 2015, when Fox censored Picasso's "Les Femmes d'Alger." The network blurred the breasts on the women in the painting which went on to become the most expensive painting ever, selling for $179.35 million.