Art lovers' row over Cupid

A row has broken out over plans to destroy a hidden series of Victorian portraits at the Royal Academy of Art to reveal an 18th century ceiling painted by a leading rival of William Hogarth.

The ceiling by William Kent, which depicts the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, dates back to 1719-22. But it lies beneath portraits, painted in the 1890s, of Royal Academicians dating back to Sir Joshua Reynolds.

This work - by John Diblee Crace - is itself obscured by up to 17 layers of white paint, which RA bosses now want to scrape off at a cost of £1.5 million, together with the portraits and their linking designs.

"I'm horrified," said Richard Holder, of the Victorian Society. But Mary Anne Stevens, the RA's collections secretary, said the Kent ceiling had turned out to be "in far better condition than we had possibly hoped for".