Sometimes, but almost never, disasters in the art world end in miracles. In 2012, a small church in Borja became the setting for one of them. Many remember the painting of Ecce Homo which decorates one of its walls, not because of the original 19th century brushstrokes, but because of the “disastrous” restoration carried out by a woman – then in the early 80s – who acted spontaneously and “without asking anyone’s permission”, although “with good intentions”. The result of the intervention of Cecilia Giménez, who died this Monday at the age of 94, was not only catastrophic, vague and unrecognizable, but it also became an object of ridicule. However, the disaster transformed the work, attributed to Elías García Martínez and of little artistic value, into a global phenomenon. Suddenly, the Ecce Homo and Borja were in everyone’s sight.
Since Cecilia Giménez attempted to restore the fresco, approximately 50 centimeters high and 40 centimeters wide, the history of the city of Zaragoza has taken an unexpected turn. What seemed like a disaster – even a crime against heritage – became the great historical event in Borja, a town of just over 5,000 inhabitants in the province of Zaragoza. Giménez’s work has been featured in documentaries, wine labels, t-shirts and even an opera. Media from around the world, such as The New York Times, The World, The telegraph and the BBC reported on this miraculous disaster.
The magnitude was such that from that moment he spoken’ecce homo It was used to refer to other later failed restorations. And not all by neighbors of good will, but also by professionals.
In Spain, before Cecilia Giménez en Borja, other amateur painters ventured to retouch the walls of religious temples. This was the case of a neighbor of Sariñena who, more than a century ago, dared to record her drawings alongside the precious paintings of Fray Manuel Bayeu. This happened in the Charterhouse of Nuestra Señora de las Fuentes, in Los Monegros. Although it is not a typical restoration – since his interventions did not affect the original frescoes – its childish-looking features caused notable amazement when they appeared.
Last summer, indignation was also noted in Seville after an intervention on the image of the Virgin of La Macarena. The restoration, ordered by the Brotherhood and entrusted to an expert, caused immediate unease among the faithful and spread to a large part of Sevillians, who did not recognize the final result. In just a week, the face of the virgin, who had made La Macarena an icon of the city, was different.
In 2011, the restoration of the fortified complex of Almería sparked a lot of controversy due to the contrast between the original 11th century stone and the steel sheets used during the intervention. The result sparked immediate rejection and opened a debate on the limits of heritage restoration. The Ministry of Culture, responsible for the work, then defended that it was a temporary solution and the only one capable of preventing the collapse of the wall. However, several groups – including the UNESCO Center of Andalusia – protested against this result and recalled that the law issued by the ministry itself prohibited the use of materials that did not exist at the time of the original construction.
Between 1992 and 1994, the Roman theater of Sagunto (Valencia), built in the 1st century, underwent a restoration so ambitious that it came close to total reconstruction. The architects responsible practically built a new theater, ignoring the fact that it was an archaeological ruin. The controversy broke out as soon as the work was completed and the complaint did not take long to arrive. The stage was completely new, the stands were unrecognizable and the use of modern materials made the set look more like a replica than a historical relic.
Another case is that of the priest of the San Cosme chapel in La Coruña, who one day decided to confront the moth and the leaks that threatened the wooden roof of this Galician Romanesque temple. He resorted to a solution that was as practical as it was controversial: burning oil and kerosene. The problem is that the chestnut planks of the roof were considered a heritage asset and the treatment left them completely blackened. The priest apologized, saying that with the limited budget he had, he could not find a more suitable method. However, neither the neighbors nor the Xunta were particularly convinced by his explanations.
The restoration of the Roman mausoleum of Abla generated a comparison that is difficult to ignore: the ancient funerary monument ended up being confused with a public urinal, according to the entry of a cultural blog dedicated to the analysis of the management of the historical heritage of the region. The reasons given were, once again, the inadequate use of materials and the construction of a new box which hides the original structure from the 2nd century, completely changing the reading of the monument.
In 2015, the San Cristóbal de Cea dolmen in Ourense ended up being incorporated into a picnic area after being transformed by workers into a table and two concrete benches. This funerary monument, more than 6,000 years old, has been included in the Catalog of Cultural Properties of the Xunta de Galicia. The intervention was discovered by an environmental group, which reported the facts to the environment and town planning prosecutor’s office. As they noted, “these events caused irreparable damage to the burial mass of what was a prehistoric cemetery of the first inhabitants of Cea, which was an example of the first monumental architecture of a funerary character in history.”
Ultimately, these cases show that not all restores go as planned. Sometimes centuries of history are erased, other times controversies are generated, and on very rare occasions, such as the Borja disaster, a mistake can become a global phenomenon.
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