In the latest blow to Picasso's seemingly accident-prone oeuvre, a woman attending an art class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday afternoon accidentally ripped a gash in a rare Rose-period painting when she stumbled into the canvas. The incident resulted in a six-inch "irregular vertical tear" on the lower right-hand corner of the 1904-05 painting, The Actor, which was taken to the museum's conservation studio for emergency treatment, according to a museum statement. The Met has not released further details about hapless woman's identity or the circumstances of her fall, though it says conservators "fully expect" to repair the painting — a moodily atmospheric portrait of a thin, costumed man that is estimated to be worth more than $130 million — in time to include it in the highly anticipated "Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art" opening April 27.

Donated to the institution in 1952 by Chrysler heiress Thelma Chrysler Foy, the work is historically significant because it "inaugurated Picasso's shift from the Blue-period world of tattered beggars and blind musicians to the Rose-period imagery of itinerant acrobats dressed in costumes taken from the commedia dell'arte," according to the museum. Friday's accident follows a widely reported mishap in 2006 when casino magnate Steve Wynn ripped a hole in Picasso's Le Rêve (1932) while gesticulating in front of the painting as he showed it off to his friends. Wynn, who is said to have paid $60 million for the famous work, had been reportedly planning to flip it to hedge funder Steven A. Cohen for about $139 million when his elbow tore through the canvas; repaired, it's now said to hang in his office.