A small Spanish town is trying to figure out what to do with a 20th-century painting of Christ that has been disfigured by a local artist who was trying to restore it.
Juan Maria Ojeda, an official in Borja town, said 80-year-old Celia Gimenez decided to touch up the fresco of Christ wearing a crown of thorns in the Misericordia church. He said no one realised how badly disfigured the painting was until she rang the town hall to say what she had done.
Ms Gimenez has defended her efforts, saying she hadn’t quite finished the job.
“I started fixing it, but then I had a last minute trip with my son, and I thought ‘I’ll finish it when I get back’,” says Ms Gimenez.
But the villagers told her she wasn’t to go near it again, and have called in a professional restorer to fix it.
The fate of the painting, completed in 1930, has made national news in Spain.
The fresco is of the genre known as "Ecce Homo" style ("Behold the Man"). But on Thursday some Twitter users were dubbing it "Ecce Mono" ("Behold the Monkey").
AP / 3 News