Here’s What Happened When an Elderly Woman Took It Upon Herself to Restore a Painting in a Nearby Church

gawker.com

We admire people who have can-do, elbow-grease-type attitudes. If something's broke, why not fix it? Especially badly-damaged artwork. How hard can it be to just pick up a paintbrush and fix a fresco? Well, as it turns out — and as an elderly Spanish woman learned recently: pretty hard.
A couple of weeks ago, the Centro de Estudios Borjanos in Borja, Spain, received a donation from the granddaughter of 19th-century painter Elías García Martínez. At the time, the Centro knew of only one painting by Martínez in Borja — Ecce Homo, a fresco on the walls of the church of Santuario de Misericordia.



That's it above. The leftmost image is how the painting looked two years ago; the middle image is how it looked in July, when it was photographed for a catalog of regional religious art. The image on right is how it looked when the Centro went to check it out on August 6th after receiving the donation. Hmm.

The restored version is apparently the work of an octogenarian neighbor of the church, who, noticing the damage to the painting, took it upon herself to restore the painting "with good intentions" but "without asking permission," as culture councillor Juan Maria de Ojeda put it. It became clear to the amateur restorer — quickly, one imagines — that "she had gotten out of hand," and she confessed to local authorities.

pollock could have done a better job

Wow, that's a terrible job.

I saw this yesterday. She has Jesus looking like some kind of monkey/gorilla with waxed eyebrowns and Michael Jacksons nose. They said they weren't sure if they were going to press charges. She is going to speak with some artists or something about what she used to do this. They would like to try and fix it.

Left pic to the middle pic is 2 years damage wow!! That woman ought to be ashamed big time.

it looks like she spilled a bunch of paint thinner on the face and hastily tried to wipe it off with a dirty rag!

She was at the Sistine Chapel yesterday and noticed some fading paint. She was last seen grabbing a ladder and a bucket of paint.

In a strange way this reminds me of when plastic surgery goes really bad.

did they do that in a mr. bean movie?

I think it's better than the original.

A friend of mine posted this pic on FB:

Yes they did. Hilarious!!

I saw this on the TV news yesterday. "Artists" are already jumping on the band wagon. They showed one copy cat who made all the figures in the Last Supper look like that...quite funny.

The Mona Lisa and the Scream were also included.

By the way the church has received a fortune in donations that have poured in from around the world.

How would this technique work with a Jackson Pollock?