The case of The Migrant Child, attributed to Banksy and created in 2019 on the façade of a historic building in Venice, has reignited the debate on the intersection between ownership rights over the physical support and copyright, particularly when the artwork is executed without the property owner’s authorization. At the end of July 2025, the work was in fact detached: a sophisticated operation carried out by specialized technicians, culminating in its safe transfer to a vault. Although intended to ensure preservation, the removal marked the physical and conceptual separation of the work from its original context.
Street art, by its very nature ephemeral and located in public space, forces a balancing of competing interests: on the one hand, the author’s moral right to the integrity of the work; on the other, the prerogatives of the property owner, who may decide to remove, cover, or even destroy the work. Italian copyright law (Law No. 633/1941) protects the artist from the very moment of creation, yet unauthorized execution on another’s property may constitute an infringement of ownership rights and limit protection.
Part of the scholarship invokes the doctrine of accessione (Article 936 Civil Code), whereby the mural becomes an integral part of the building; others refer to commistione (Article 939 Civil Code) or to the dicatio ad patriam, namely the dedication of the work to collective use. In any event, the act of removal introduces an element of transformation: the work, conceived as site-specific, loses part of its original meaning once detached.
The debate is not confined to Italy. From a comparative perspective, Germany adopts an approach similar to the Italian one, generally recognizing the primacy of property rights – and treating unauthorized street art as damage to the property – while nonetheless preserving copyright protection where the requirements of originality are met. Consequently, if the property owner decides to remove the portion of the wall and sell it, such conduct may conflict with the author’s exclusive right of “distribution,” unless the artist has implicitly accepted the prospect of future alienation. Equally noteworthy is the French system, which, much like the Italian and German models, grants copyright protection to all works reflecting the artist’s personality, regardless of the medium. Original street art thus falls within the creations protected by the Intellectual Property Code, without prejudice to the fact that its unauthorized execution may amount to a criminal offence of degradation.
The Venetian case illustrates this tension well: the collective interest in preserving an artistic language born on the margins of legality clashes with the dominical prerogatives of the property owner, who may perceive removal as a form of protection or as an economic opportunity. Nor are precedents lacking.
In the absence of ad hoc legislation, the issue remains entrusted to evolving interpretations of long-standing civil law doctrines, conceived for very different contexts. The removal of The Migrant Child demonstrates how urgent a systematic reflection on street art has become: who may truly dispose of it? And how can cultural value, public interest, and individual rights be reconciled, regardless of the artist’s fame?
