The Art of Deception

Sometimes, you have to read a lot of words in a news story before you find the kernel of truth that lies at the core of it all.

In this story, that sentence is:

Spanish law allows people without professional training in conservation to try their hand at mending old artworks.

Which means that with no qualifications at all, you, too, can strut into a Spanish museum or art collection with your brushes and oil paints and say, "Let me have a go at fixing up that cracked, priceless masterpiece."

And here you see the result.  According to the Europa Press reports, a man who collects paintings over in Valéncia, Spain, saw that his painting of the Virgin Mary was getting old and worn. He paid €1,200 (that's like $1,350) to have it cleaned and restored. The image at the right top above shows the amazing job he did, and then someone else took a crack at it (literally) and the bottom right is how the Blessed Mother now appears.  They have her looking like that woman on The Young And The Restless who slept with Victor. Yes, I know that's a lot of women.

So now, in the name of all that makes sense, Spanish authorities are calling for someone to step and regulate this travesty.

The first one of these popped up in 2012. You'll remember it in its before and after images that were mainstays on every tv show, except Ice Road Truckers, for weeks.  They call this Monkey Christ because this hapless helpless painter said she would return the fresco of Jesus to its original glory, and wound up with something resembling a monkey from "Animal Kingdom."

I mean, really.

“I don’t think these people should be referred to as restorers,” Fernando Carrera, a professor at the Galician School for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage and former president of ACRE, told the Guardian newspaper. “Let’s be honest: They’re bodgers who botch things up. They destroy things.”


I had to look up "Bodgers." That's a name for a skilled woodworker in England.  Why drag them into this? 

Hint to Spanish art lovers: if someone comes along and tells you they can restore your treasures, tell them to fix up this courtroom artist rendering of the most holy Tom Brady.  If they can make this look like Brady, they can have the job!