If there is any political leader on earth who would feel untroubled by the proximity of a lightly clad beauty, then it is surely Silvio Berlusconi.

The media mogul and Italy's prime minister made a large part of his fortune televising variety shows packed with scarcely veiled, undulating female flesh. One of the members of his cabinet - the equal opportunities minister, Mara Carfagna - was until just a few years ago a topless model and showgirl on one of his television channels.

So it was with something approaching incredulity that it emerged yesterday that Berlusconi's staff had perpetrated an act of censorship worthy of the Victorians who fitted skirts to table legs.

Over the table at which Berlusconi holds press conferences in Palazzo Chigi, Italy's equivalent of No 10 Downing Street, hangs a huge copy of a painting by the 18th-century Venetian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. It was selected by Berlusconi himself.

Slap in the middle of the painting is a neat, round female breast. During press conferences, as a commentator writing for the daily La Stampa noted, the breast floats above the prime minister's head "like a halo". This, it was felt, was too much for the sensibilities of a nation that - long before Berlusconi came along - had been feasting its eyes on half-naked Magdalenes and Minervas, not to mention the blatantly erotic statuary of Antonio Canova. Tiepolo's breast, with attendant nipple, had to go.

Photos taken of the most recent press conference at Palazzo Chigi show the central figure has been retouched. An extra fold of clothing has appeared that covers the offending breast.

Berlusconi's chief spin doctor, the junior minister Paolo Bonaiuti, told Corriere della Sera it was "an initiative of those on the staff of the prime minister who take care of Berlusconi's image". He went on: "That breast [and] that nipple ended up right in the shots the news bulletins used [for coverage of] the press conferences."

He added that the prime minister's image advisers feared that such a sight might offend the sensibilities of some television viewers. What is clear, however, is that the elimination of the breast, and its accompanying nipple, has offended at least as much the sensibilities of some of Berlusconi's own admirers.

The art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, who was a junior culture minister in an earlier Berlusconi government, 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."

Photos published yesterday showed the painting untouched in May. It appears therefore to have been covered at around the time the prime minister was becoming entangled in a succession of controversies involving women friends and associates.

Last month, he cancelled a television interview in which he was to have answered questions about his relationship with the 32-year-old Carfagna and the alleged existence of tapes of compromising exchanges between them. Carfagna has refused to comment on the claims, saying only: "I don't deal with telephone intercepts, with gossip, with nonsense."

At the same time, a court in Rome has been hearing a case brought by the ex-husband of a TV announcer who claims he lost his job because of the 71-year-old Berlusconi's relationship with his estranged wife. The prime minister's lawyers have heatedly disputed his allegations.

The Tiepolo controversy carries an added layer of interest because the lady who has been tampered with in the allegoric work is Truth. And her semi-nudity is central to the meaning of the work, entitled Time Unveiling Truth, painted around 1743.

In a very literal sense, it is about the "naked truth". Floating on a cloud in one of Tiepolo's hallmark, duck-egg blue skies, Truth cosies up to an elderly, bearded Time who has just apparently stripped her to the waist. In one hand, Truth holds a mirror that reflects her semi-nudity to a figure representing Lies. Unable to cope with the sight, he covers his eyes.

Opposition politicians can be expected to note that, now Truth has a new top fitted by Berlusconi's image consultant, Lies should feel altogether more at ease in the office of Italy's prime minister.

The Italian's phrase book

· In April this year Berlusconi caused outrage after saying "Zapatero [Spain's prime minister] has formed a government that is too pink, something that we cannot do in Italy because there is a prevalence of men in politics and it isn't easy to find women who are qualified ... He will have problems leading them"

· Earlier this year he said of the prime ministerial candidate for Italy's La Destra (The Right) party: "People will vote for la Santanche because she is a beautiful babe"

· During his last election campaign he told female supporters, "Ladies ... I have a mission for you on election day: cook! Sweet and exquisite things, please. Bring them to the polling station to be examined. The boldest can try making a tart, the most skilful, profiteroles"

· In the run up to this year's election he observed, "The left has no taste, not even when it comes to women ... As for our [women candidates] being more beautiful, I say that because in parliament they have no competition"

· In March he imparted the following advice to a hard-up female student: "The best thing would be for you to find a millionaire," adding, "with a smile like yours you can do it"

· On welcoming newly elected female MP Mara Carfagna to parliament he joked: "I am obliged to remind you of a rule in the Forza Italia group, the jus primae noctis." (a Latin reference to the medieval "law of the first night" which gave the lord of an estate the right to "deflower" new brides)

· In 2005, he claimed he had "brushed up" all his "playboy skills" to persuade Finland's president, Tarja Halonen, to agree to host the European Food Safety Authority in Italy

Holly Bentley