Botched Restoration

Sarah Jakubowski
9/3/13
Period 4 Sculpture and Ceramics
    This piece of art used to be Ecce Homo, "Behold the Man".  At least it was, until 81 year old widow Cecilia Giménez painted over it.  Now it is known by Ecce Mono, "Behold the Monkey".  There are a few nicknames for this select piece of art.  I'm not going to list them, though.  The authorities of Borja had claimed to believe it was vandalism at first, even though Cecilia claims she worked on it during the day, in broad daylight, with approval from the local clergy.  The church claims she did not have permission.  I'm not too sure what she thought she could do to it, since she was obviously not too good at art stuff.  Now that it's famous, the people who once thought about inforcing legal charges on her might be thankful instead.  Because of her odd recreation on the painting.  Personally I think it's a funny image.  I also think that this topic is really abstract.  Write what we feel about this piece of art?  A while from now it might be worth some money, but I'd think not.  The church announced that they would hire a professional or pay them to come and fix it up.  Following the press coverage, Cecilia had been reported to be suffering of terrible anxiety attacks and being reluctant to eat and/or leave her house.  A year after, the Misericordia hypothesized that about 57,000 guests and tourists from all over Europe, Latin America, Japan, and China went to see the fresco and among all those dropped somewhere around €50,000 in the collection box.  Just to see this "failed" recreation.  It's getting more profit than it probably would have had it stayed the same as the original.  All in all, wouldn't you say this was a success and not a failure?  Cecilia has not seen penny nor dime of the donations her creation has wrought.  She is working towards a copyright deal over her painting.  Through this(or maybe after), Cecilia said, "I couldn't understand why everyone was talking about me.  I only tried to stop the fresco succumbing to damp, as it so often had."  She wanted 49 percent of the money at the sanctuary to go towards people suffering due to the same degenerative sickness as her biological offspring. 



Citations:  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/so-bad-it-was-brilliant-botched-fresco-restoration-answers-spanish-towns-prayers-with-tourism-boom-8762069.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/world/europe/botched-restoration-of-ecce-homo-fresco-shocks-spain.html?_r=0
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/botched-ecce-homo-painting