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Church masterpiece 'restored' as Mr. Bean would do it
The efforts of an elderly parishioner to restore a 120-year-old fresco on a column inside a Spanish church have some wondering if a Mr. Bean movie was the inspiration for the effort.
The fresco, titled Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), is a depiction of Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns. It was painted on a wall of the Sanctuary of Mercy at Borja, near Zaragoza, Spain, by artist Elias Garcia Martinez more than a century ago.
Its troubling "restoration" occurred after the local Center for Borja Studies received the donation of a canvas done by Garcia from one his granddaughters who lives nearby, according to the center's blog.
Center staff noted that the only other known work by Garcia in the area was Ecce Homo, went to the church to photograph the fresco, and realized it was in bad shape.
Parishioner Cecilia Giménez said she was asked by the church to fix things up.
“The priest was aware … he knew,” she is quoted as saying in a report on Euronews.com. “Of course I did it because I was told to do it."
In its blog, the center expresses "astonishment" that "an intervention was done" on the painting.
"As unbelievable as it sounds, this is what remains of the work of an artist whose relatives still live in our city," the blog reads.
Giménez said her work was done in the open and nobody tried to stop her, according to Euronews.
"Everybody that came into the church saw me. I never tried to hide,” she is quoted as saying.
"Clearly, she has destroyed the painting," Garcia's granddaughter, Teresa Garcia, is quoted as saying.
The center says it doesn't know if the "restoration" can be fixed.
"We don’t know if this indescribable act has a solution, but there is no doubt that someone should adopt strict measures so that there is not a repetition of acts like this, which despite its intentions, should be strongly condemned," its blog says.
But in reader comments on the blog, some wonder whether the "restoration" is a repetition of a previous act, one from the 1997 Rowan Atkinson film "Bean."
“Something similar happened in the movie Mr. Bean. … It probably inspired whoever did this,” one commenter writes.
In the movie, Mr. Bean accidentally sneezes on the masterpiece "Whistler's Mother" and attempts a crude repair.
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The Ecce Homo "restoration" is arguably better than Bean's line drawing, and that might be just as well, because there's doubt that Ecce Homo can be returned to its original splendor. And at least one commenter on the blog sees a silver lining.
"I think that the city of Borja should conserve the painting in its current state," the person writes. "It could become a tourist attraction for the town.”
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Don't get em in a wad. This is certainly not meant to bash Christianity. We are talking about one person, could've been anyone, who ruined a beautiful, classic piece of artwork that happened to be in a church. That's it. No more. No less.
I just came onto this post and I haven't read all the entries but this is really strange, Did someone really do this?
I laughed my head off. Mr. Bean made this.
The world could do with one less artist..
Oh, I get it, Obama hired her.
Or what happens when Romney cuts all funding to the arts to pay for his subsidies to big oil.
From Christ experiencing the divine ecstasy
to
Smiling Sasquatch in too small a robe offers you a jelly roil and perhaps more.
i think he modeled it after a cabbage patch doll??? wat a shame 🙁
She took Martinez from obscurity to world wide fame. A notable artist can repair the damage using photographs of what it used to be, it's not like it's a Picaso and it was seriously damaged anyway. Try again.
Looks like one of the characters on South Park.
.
That's terrible , but that is what you get for letting an idiot work on a supposedly a masterpiece , so it's the church to blame .
The Food Channel is running a special about how she restored the jelly roll at the bottom.
It does make you wonder... did she actually think things were going all right? "okay, the eyes look good... moving on..."
If this had been a "restoration" to a Da Vinci painting......
Maybe He gave her other talents that we just don't see. I'm sure He forgives her.
Agreed. A God of forgiveness would have a good chuckle over a material object that was botched by good intentions. Only materialistic judgmental humans would rip into an elderly woman who put her love and time into fixing a painting the best she knew how. It was already destroyed to begin with! 😀
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