The beautiful shepherdess is disfigured.
Before the carnage, the sculpture adorning an art deco building in the city of Palencia, northwest of Madrid, depicted a smiling woman surrounded by animals.
But after a disastrous restoration, it took on the appearance of "
a cartoonish face,
" according to Antonio Guzman Capel.
In a Facebook post, this painter was the first to talk about the deterioration of the sculpture, which dates from 1923.
In comments, the damaged sculpture was described as "
potato
" and inspired Internet users to make comparisons with Donald Trump.
“
As he has to leave the White House, he has moved here,
” one of them quipped.
"
This is NOT a professional restoration
", abounds on Twitter the Acre, the Spanish association of professional conservators and restorers.
Read also: The restoration of a Spanish Christ turns into a massacre
The "
head potato
" Palencia joins the long list of failed restorations in Spain, as recalled by
The Art Newspaper
.
The most memorable is undoubtedly the "
monkey christ
" of Borja, a small Spanish town of 5000 inhabitants located 60 kilometers from Zaragoza.
This restoration of the
Ecce Homo, the
work of local painter Elias Garcia Martinez, had aroused disbelief.
Read also: An old copy of a Murillo ransacked by a restaurateur in Spain
Faced with this umpteenth failure, the Spanish conservatives are calling amateurs to order.
“To
restore is not to repair.
Such interventions must obey certain internationally approved criteria, such as those applied by the Spanish Institute for Cultural Heritage, and other approved organizations existing in Spain,
”tweeted the Valencian curator Illanos Argudo.
Asked in July by the Spanish media Europa Press, Maria Borjas, vice-president of Acre, repeated her commitment: to introduce stricter regulations around restorations.
According to her, the number of failed restorations is vastly underestimated, most of which do not receive media attention.
“
Unfortunately, they are much more common than you think
,” she says.
Spain's cultural heritage is in danger.
"
SEE ALSO
- Heritage: should the state do more?