Spanish restorers strike again: disfigured Virgin Mary, copy from Murillo

A new case of embarrassing restoration in Spain, similar to Elías García Martínez’s now-famous Ecce Homo at the Santuario de Misericordia in Borja (in Aragon), restored in 2012 by an 80-year-old local woman, Cecilia Giménez, an amateur painter with no experience who carried out a devastating repainting of the work, which has since been nicknamed Ecce Mono (“here is the monkey,” in Spanish) to emphasize the bad result obtained. Now something very similar has happened in Valencia, where a private collector entrusted a Virgin Mary, a copy from an original by the great Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, to a restorer for a simple cleaning job.

The restorer, however, apparently specialized in furniture and not paintings (and, given the results, one surely has to wonder how he fares with furniture as well), and so the collector found in his hands not a delicate, beautiful Madonna with adolescent features as she originally was, but a kind of unwatchable monster: the thoughtless restorer, in fact, completely disfigured the Virgin’s face. The collector, incredulous, apparently asked the “professional” (quotation marks are a must) for an explanation, and the latter allegedly justified himself by saying that he had only tried to fix the problem the painting presented. However, ruining the painting: now the collector has turned to another restorer in the hope of repairing the damage (but this time he first took care to contact a specialist in painting).

But the thought-provoking thing is that cases like this, like that of theEcce Homo and like others that have occurred recently in Spain, seem to be far from isolated. This was explained to the Iberian media by María Borja, coordinator of the Asociación Profesional de Conservadores Restauradores de España (Professional Association of Conservators and Restorers of Spain, ACRE), according to whom similar cases are “unfortunately much more frequent than we think. We only know the cases that society denounces through the press or social networks, but there are many situations where people without training have intervened on the works. The works undergo these unprofessional interventions that can cause irreversible changes.”

But why does this filth happen so frequently in Spain? According to Borja, because the profession of conservators and restorers is not regulated: ACRE’s goal is precisely to change the state of affairs. For example, the law regulating cultural property in the Valencian Community does not specify who the professional entitled to work on cultural property should be. In short, there are no legal requirements for owners to use professionals trained in the field to intervene on the works. “This legislative deficiency,” Borja says, “leads to disastrous interventions that we learn about from time to time, and this raises serious alarms when it comes to Romanesque sculptures or Renaissance images of great value.” All this despite the fact that there are many properly trained professionals in Spain with studies and experience behind them. Added to this is an inspection activity on the part of conservation agencies that, according to ACRE, would not be sufficient. In short: to avoid cases like these, a real breakthrough would be needed in Spain that would guarantee both the works and the figures of the restorers.

Below, the hapless Virgin before, during and at the end of the intervention.

Spanish restorers strike again: disfigured Virgin Mary, copy from Murillo

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.