Notorious attack on Michelangelo's Pietà occurred on 21 May 1972. On this day 53 years ago, a Hungarian man called Laszlo Toth climbed over an altar rail in St Peter’s Basilica and attacked ...

Pieta and a tribute to my mother My mother literally sacrificed her life for the sake of my education and career. Basab Dasgupta | May 11, 2025 9:21 pm ...

An interesting piece of trivia: Brody’s character in The Brutalist is Laszlo Toth. In real life, Laszlo Toth was a Hungarian-born Australian geologist who vandalised Michelangelo’s Pieta in 1972.

In the film, Toth is a Holocaust survivor who struggles for work and queues for free bread on arrival in post-war America, before his talents are eventually spotted by a wealthy benefactor.

Not by an insane outsider like Australia’s Laszlo Toth, who in 1972 badly damaged Michelangelo’s Pieta. We’re talking an inside job, on papal authority.

In real life Laszlo Toth is the Hungarian geologist who, in 1972, vandalized Michaelangelo’s The Pieta. Why, the viewer asks, has writer and director Brady Corbet picked a name we already know ...

in 'The Brutalist.' László Tóth's story runs counter to the real-life experience of Marcel Breuer, Ernő Goldfinger and others ...

In 1972, Michelangelo’s Pieta sculpture in St Peter’s Basilica was seriously damaged when Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian geologist, struck the statue with a hammer.