About

"The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables" Restoration Fail refers to two botched attempts at restoring Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's painting "The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables," a portrait of the Virgin Mary. The failed restorations drew comparisons to another infamously amateurish restoration job done by an elderly Spanish parishioner on Elías García Martínez' "Ecce Homo," now widely known as Potato Jesus or "Monkey Christ."

Origin

On June 20th, 2020, Las Provincias^[2] broke the news that an art collector had paid a furniture restorer 1,200 euros to restore Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's painting "The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables" (shown below, left) resulting in a painting that looked nothing like the original (shown below, top right). A second attempt was made to restore the work, which also failed (shown below, bottom right).

Spread

On June 22nd, 2020, The Guardian^[1] reported on the botches, bringing the news to English-speaking audiences. The botches led to calls for regulation of art restoration in Spain. Fernando Carrera, a professor at the Galician School for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, noted that no such laws were in place and that people who weren't trained in art restoration could attempt to do the work, which resulted in the botched pieces. "Can you imagine just anyone being allowed to operate on other people?" he said. "Or someone being allowed to sell medicine without a pharmacist’s licence? Or someone who’s not an architect being allowed to put up a building?"

The botched piece quickly drew comparisons to Potato Jesus on Twitter. User @TheTomZone^[3] wrote, "Ecce Homo has a friend now," gaining over 150 retweets and 620 likes^[3] (shown below, left). User @numbereightball^[4] joked the botched Mary looked like Potato Jesus run through a gender-swap FaceApp filter, gaining over 760 retweets and 2,900 likes (shown below, right).

Others began making jokes about the botched restoration itself, joking that the restored character was more relatable. User @agnesfrim^[5] joked, "it's certainly a mood," gaining over 140 retweets and 1,100 likes (shown below, left). User @nhuyngo^[6] joked the restorations were similar to what the character Redd would try to sell in Animal Crossing (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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External References