A 12-year-old boy took the trip of a lifetime on Sunday when he stumbled into a 17th-century still life, puncturing the canvas with his hand as he tried to steady himself.

The incident, which happened at an exhibition in the Huashan 1914 art district in Taipei, Taiwan, left a fist-sized hole in the painting. The work itself, Still Life of Flowers by Italian baroque artist Paolo Porpora, dates at around 1660 and is valued at US$1.5m (£950,000, €1.3m).

Like many of the 55 artworks at the exhibition – Images of a Genius: The Face of Leonardo – the Porpora oil painting belongs to a private collection.

According to the Central News Agency (CNA), Taiwan’s official news agency, the boy and his family will not be charged for the damage.

CCTV caught the boy’s unfortunate wobble on camera and the video was shared on CNA’s YouTube channel.

The exhibition curator, Andrea Rossi, was looking into repairing the artwork in Taiwan before returning it to Italy. He asked that the boy not be blamed, CNA reported.

According to the head of exhibition co-organiser TST Art of Discovery Sun Chi-hsuan, the insurance company would be asked to cover restoration costs and compensate the owner.

A similar accident occurred in 2010 when a woman fell into a 1904 painting by Pablo Picasso, creating a 15cm (6in) rip. The damage to The Actor, which was valued at the time at well over US$100m (£63m, €86.6m), happened at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and took three months to repair.