HOW TO COMPLETELY FAIL A DEPICTION!
Restoration is an art unto itself, helping preserve art history’s greatest masterpieces for posterity. But for every job well done, there are others that meet a critical eye, and sometimes the ancestor's legacy is destroyed before its eyes. “I don’t think these people should be referred to as restorers. Let’s be honest, they’re bodgers who botch things up. They destroy things.”
This Ecco Homo Fresco from the 19th century was made by a Spanish artist Ellias Garcia Martinez. A local
amateur attempted to restore it in 2012, Replacing nearly all of Martinez’s original brushstrokes. The
amateur turned the detailed figure into what appears to be featureless monster. It even drew widespread
mockery and was dubbed "monkey Christ." The botched job resembles a pale-faced ape with cartoon-style
eyes. Many memes were made after this disaster.
https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-internet-reactions-botched-ecce-homo-restoration/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
"Beast Jesus" is not the only well-intentioned restoration job gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Left, how the "Ecce Homo" fresco looked before the "restoration" Right, shows what the amateur made it look like after.
A Canadian church had a vandalism problem, with local hoodlums repeatedly decapitating a statue of Mary
holding the baby Jesus. When the head finally disappeared for good, local artist Heather Wise offered to
replace it free of charge. The church happily accepted, given that her professional estimate was just
$7,300.
But what they got was a freakish, spikey-headed red monstrosity that became a Twitter sensation, often
gleefully compared to Lisa Simpson. Wise claimed that the terracotta face, which soon began melting in
the rain, was just a temporary placeholder while she carved a stone replacement; But in the end,
Heather’s actions played a positive role: the man who stole the real head got embarrassed and brought it
back. We also have to thank the media attention.
Mary and Baby Jesus statue (mid 20th-century) Sainte-Anne-des-Pins Catholic Church, Sudbury, Ontario
Perhaps even worse than a sexy Mary is this glammed-out Saint Anthony of Padua, unveiled at a Colombian
church. The parish had sent the statue out for repairs due to termite damage. When the work was
returned, the church was horrified to find that the 150-year-old sculpture had been given an
over-the-top facelift, with both the saint and the baby Jesus in his arms seemingly sporting excessive
eye shadow, blush, and lipstick. The restored artwork was made fun of for its effeminate appearance,
with Giovanni Montero, a former secretary of culture, telling local news outlet Semana that “the person
who worked on the statue, whom I do not qualify as a restorer, practically deformed the original
features of the saint”.
Saint Anthony of Padua after restoration at a Colombian church.
A wooden statue of the Virgin Mary at the chapel in El Ranadoiro, was restored into a colorful and
artistic statue; it was given a bright pink headscarf, sky blue robe and eyeliner. The amateur restored
it in garish colours, giving Jesus a bright green robe in the latest botched amateur art restoration to
make headlines in the country. I just have to say that the result is just staggering. You don’t know
whether to laugh or cry, just like with an artpiece.
The artist added a funny comment to justify his final work, 'I painted them with the colours that looked
good to me.
Left, The wooden statue before restoration. Right, the restored statue with colorful colors at the Chapel in El Ranadoiro
Historian Milton Teixeira was shocked to discover that an overzealous restorer had tarted up the statue
of Santa Barbara at Brazil’s Santa Cruz da Barra Chapel in 2012. The dramatic makeover had given the
wooden statue flat, white skin, over-the-top eyeliner, and a garishly colored robe.
The work was done over a six-month period by conservators from the Museu Histórico do Exército in Rio,
and supposedly removed up to four layers of paint to restore the statue’s original appearance. But
Teixeira, a frequent visitor to the church for 20 years, was nonetheless horrified.
Left, before restoration. Santa Barbara at Brazil’s Santa Cruz da Barra Chapel in 2012
One of Italy’s most unique works of art, the Tree of Fertility, was uncovered in the year 2000 and is
famous for its depiction of numerous phalluses, or at least it was, before a 2011 cleaning. The
restorers who did the work were accused of censoring the historic fresco by removing about 25 dangling
penis fruits from the previously laden branches.
“The restoration in no way radically modified the original features,” insisted Mario Scalini, the local
province’s head of heritage and arts. He added that restoring the badly damaged fresco required the
removal of salt and calcium deposits, “The operation was carried out with the greatest of care.” A town
official called for an investigation into the matter, but the damage was apparently done. Fortunately,
recent photographs appear to show at least a few surviving penises.
Tree of Fertility (ca. 1265), La Fonte dell’Abbondanza Massa Marittima, Tuscany, Italy
It was a guide at the Dunhuang grottoes in Gansu province who first took issue with the new paint job on
a 1,000-year-old Buddha statue in China’s Anyue township. The amateur restoration job was carried out by
local villagers back in 1995, but it wasn’t until someone shared pictures of the sculpture in 2018 that
the catastrophic paint job attained global notoriety.
The Anyue county government blamed the well-meaning villagers’ lack of conservation knowledge, and said
that officials didn’t notice the new paint job until it was complete. “After the incident, the
Administration of Cultural Heritage improved the management and protection of other relics,” “No similar
repair work was carried out again in recent years.”
Buddha statue (ca. 1000) Anyue, China The Anyue Buddha before and after restoration.
Spain Has Been Hit by Yet Another Bungling Restorer who Turned This Beautiful Virgin Mary Painting Into
an Unrecognizable Blob... An attempt to restore a copy of baroque artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s
work has turned its beatific Virgin Mary into a misshapen lump with red lips. A second effort by a
furniture restorer to clean the Baroque copy, ended with yet another botched artwork that looks
comically disfigured and nothing like the original.
Left, the original painting of Virgin Mary. Right (top) the first attempt on restoring this painting. (bottom) the second attempt on the botched painting.
The ancient Buddhist frescos in China’s Yunjie Temple were in dire need of conservation work to preserve
the flaking, disintegrating paintings. Unfathomably, in what is an all-too-familiar occurrence, the
£100,000 job turned into a technicolor nightmare. New storybook-style paintings completely replaced the
original Qing dynasty-era works.
The result amounted to nothing less than the “the destruction of cultural relics since the original
relics no longer exist,” Wang Jinyu, an expert on fresco restoration from the Dunhuang Academy said. In
response, two government officials were fired, one of whom claimed it had been an the “unauthorized
conservation project.”
Left, the ancient Buddhist frescos in Yunjie Temple in Chaoyang, northeast China, that has now been covered by cartoon-like paintings as part of a restoration, right. (ca. 907–1125)
A statue of St. George has been in the Church of St. Michael in Estella, Spain for 500 years. An amateur
local "restored" it without consulting the town's government or art restoration experts, but in fact it
was the local parish that decided it needed restoration. It actually looks awful and now the sculpture
is barely recognisable after such an extreme intervention; the Saint’s rosy pink cheeks, wide-eyed stare
and bland armour give a cartoon-esque look. George was transformed from a knight struggling to slay a
dragon to someone who looks more like a depressed, slightly shocked teen.
"It's not been the kind of restoration that it should have been for this 16th-century statue. They’ve
used plaster and the wrong kind of paint and it's possible that the original layers of paint have been
lost," Estella's mayor Koldo Leoz, told The Guardian. "This is an expert job it should have been done by
experts."
Left, how the statue of Saint George looked before the "restoration" Right, how it turned out after. Located at the Church of Saint Michael in Estella, Spain