After the Ecce Homo Monkey Christ came the Tintin St George. And after the Tintin St George has come an unassuming trinity of late 15th-century statues that sit in a tiny shrine in the north-western Spanish region of Asturias, suddenly resplendent in freshly painted robes and, it seems, more than a touch of makeup.
The latest artworks to fall prey to well-intentioned amateur restoration are wooden statues of the Virgin and Child, the Virgin and Child with St Anne, and St Peter, in the hamlet of Rañadorio.
Although the statues were sympathetically – and professionally – restored 15 years ago, one local resident apparently obtained the parish priest’s permission to freshen them up over the summer.
Her efforts swiftly elicited comparisons with Elías García Martínez’s fresco of the scourged Christ, which shot to social media fame after it was disastrously restored six year ago, and a more recent attempt to jolly up St George as he battles his dragon in a chapel in Navarre.
Not only have the Rañadorio figures been slathered in bright paint, but those of Mary, her mother and Jesus have been coloured for the first time, much to the horror of the original, professional restorer.
“They’ve used the kind of industrial enamel paint they sell for painting anything and absolutely garish and absurd colours,” Luis Suárez Saro told the Guardian. “The result is just staggering. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
Saro, who visited the shrine with friends last week, said he was at a loss to comprehend what had taken place. “This whole thing’s a wee bit difficult to understand because all the neighbours got together in 2002 to agree the restoration we did, which was then signed off and paid for by the local culture department.
“The neighbours were all very happy with the restoration. That statues were in a pretty poor state back then but we managed to recover bits of the original paint on two of the statues – 50% or 60% – but one had never been painted.”
Saro said a thorough infrared examination of the statues would have to be undertaken to determine the extent of the damage and to see whether the original polychrome paint had survived.
However, María Luisa Menéndez, the local tobacco shop owner who cracked out her brushes and paint, defended her work, claiming the statues had been looking a bit tired and dull.
“I’m not a professional painter but I’ve always liked painting and the statues really needed painting,” she told El Comercio newspaper. “I painted them as best I could using what I thought were the right colours. The neighbours liked them too. Ask around here and you’ll find out.”
A spokesman for the archbishop of Oviedo said staff were too busy preparing for Saturday’s feast of the Virgin of Covadonga to comment.
For Saro, the latest botched restoration is symptomatic of an enduring problem. “I think it’s just ignorance and a lack of sensitivity towards art in its original state,” he said.
“But this is normally just the tip of the iceberg and a lot of cases never come to light, maybe because a lot of artworks are privately owned. It’s just a shame that we’ve had so many cases in such a short space of time.”
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