Thursday 23 August 2012

oh dear old ladies eh !?






BORJA.- A combination of three documents provided by the Centre de Estudios Borjanos on August 22, 2012 shows the original version of the painting Ecce Homo (L) by 19th-century painter Elias Garcia Martinez, the deteriorated version (C) and the restored version by an elderly woman in Spain. An elderly woman?s catastrophic attempt to ?restore? a century-old oil painting of Christ in a Spanish church has provoked popular uproar, and amusement. Titled ?Ecce Homo? (Behold the Man), the original was no masterpiece, painted in two hours in 1910 by a certain Elias Garcia Martinez directly on a column in the church at Borja, northeastern Spain. The well-intentioned but ham-fisted amateur artist, in her 80s, took it upon herself to fill in the patches and paint over the original work, which depicted Christ crowned with thorns, his sorrowful gaze lifted to heaven. AFP PHOTO/ CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS BORJANOS.