Experts call for regulation after latest botched art restoration in Spain https://t.co/kZyaIdo1sD
— The Guardian (@guardian) June 22, 2020
In 2012, the painting Ecce Homo went viral when Cecilia Giménez restored it to its not-quite-original glory. In 2020, another Spanish painting has undergone the same indignity -twice. In the 17th century, Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo painted a couple of dozen versions of his masterpiece The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables. One of them belongs to a private collector in València, who paid a furniture restorer €1,200 euros to clean the painting. We can only guess as to what exactly happened, but the owner was not happy with the face of the "restoration." So the worker tried again, and ended up with an image even more different from the original.
Fernando Carrera, a professor at the Galician School for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, said such cases highlighted the need for work to be carried out only by properly trained restorers.
“I don’t think this guy – or these people – should be referred to as restorers,” Carrera told the Guardian. “Let’s be honest: they’re bodgers who botch things up. They destroy things.”
Read more on this story at The Guardian. The original report in Spanish is here. -via Boing Boing