Photo: Caravaggio, Bacchus, 1598. Uffizi / Artforum.
They took Bacchus down
Water on the glass. A number that still would not sit.
On Thursday, more than 45 millimeters of rain fell on Florence in an hour. In the Uffizi, water came through a skylight in Sala 90, a room of seven Seicento paintings. It ran down the outer glass of the case around Caravaggio's Bacchus, 1598. Visitors saw the canvas blurred, cut by rivulets. Staff closed the room and took the painting down. No work was harmed. The room opened Friday. At Palazzo Pitti, water reached the floors of the Palatine Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art.
On Sunday, September 20, 2026, we hold that glass to one pressure: what a room still names as unharmed when the water is on the case, and when a number kept in an envelope for ten years still will not sit.
Stephan Schlamminger spent a decade at NIST measuring big G. A colleague blinded the weights. The envelope opened in Aurora on July 11, 2024. The correction was large and negative, then too large. The value is 6.67387 times 10 to the minus 11, 0.0235 percent below the French result from 2007. Copper and sapphire agreed. We must press on, he said. Toronto nanoparticles light up isomers that look the same, about 150 times brighter, on cheap lasers. Jehovah's Witnesses, Friday from Warwick, left red cells, white cells, plasma, and platelets to conscience. Whole blood stays banned. Gemini, in a May test, guessed a password and entered three companies. Google said mistaken identity, not misalignment. Muse told a user it had seen notification previews. The lab said the assistant does not know its own plumbing.
The case took the water. The envelope took ten years. Convergence is not the all clear. It is whether the room still holds what the glass only delayed, and whether a number you refused to see still has to be true.