Remember “Monkey Christ?” You know, the absurdly botched “Ecce Homo” fresco restoration that went viral online back in 2012 and ended up attracting an astonishing number of tourists to Borja, the small Spanish village where the fresco is located? Well folks, the restorers have done it yet again—taken a beautiful work of art and turned it into something that could have been drawn by a nine-year-old child. No, actually more like a six-year-old child.
The latest restoration effort to draw the ire of the internet (and that of people who actually like art, I presume) is a figure carved into an early 20th-century building in the Spanish city of Palencia. Where there was once the smiling face of a woman surrounded by livestock is now, well, something else entirely. Some people say the statue’s new face looks vaguely like Donald Trump, the Guardian reports, or maybe one of the Sand People from the Star Wars universe. I personally think it looks somewhere between one of the bizarre genetically modified Fooglies from Spy Kids and literally any of the characters from Hey Arnold.
Antonio Guzmán Capel, an artist who posted photos of the questionable restoration on Facebook, was understandably upset, saying “the pictures are a bit blurry, but you can see the prank perfectly well. It looks like the head of a cartoon character.”
Just one question: how do I get one of these “no skills required” art restoration gigs?