This Unforgivably Bad Art Restoration Legit Hurt My Back Because I Was Laughing So Hard

It’s become obvious to me that I really needed a good laugh today. I spent yesterday locked up inside with Hurricane/Tropical Storm Eta hammering my house. Everything’s fine but being trapped inside for an extended period of time while waiting for the power to go out at any minute isn’t good for the mind or soul. Then this historically awful art restoration from Spain fell into my lap this morning and I laughed so hard I think I might’ve legitimately tweaked my back.

For whatever reason, the country of Spain seems to drop one of these on the world every few years and we’ve reached the point where when anytime I hear about art being destroyed in a restoration I’m just going to assume it happened in Spain. This one is so so so so so bad it’s actually the perfect representation of that ‘How It Started vs. How It’s Going’ meme that’s been everywhere this year.

This happened in Palencia, Spain and it’s as if they tried to turn this once beautiful piece of art into a drunk emoji and in that regard, they certainly succeeded. This is epically bad and I don’t use that word lightly. This will go into the record books as one of the worst art restorations in centuries. Here it is:

As you might imagine, over on Twitter people had some thoughts about this:

https://twitter.com/diananguyen___/status/1326709050386558982

The ‘then vs. now’ memes started rolling in because as I mentioned before this really is a perfect representation of how this year has gone.

Obviously, it’s all about the eyes with this botched restoration. It’s almost as if they smoothed over the face and then stuck their thumbs in there to create some eye holes because they’d forgotten to do so until the end.

https://twitter.com/SusanCarland/status/1326772814263824385

I’m 100% qualified for Art Restoration School in Spain and I say this as someone whose only art class was 2D art in H.S. where I received my lowest grade of any class ever.

According to Artnet, The Professional Association of Restorers and Conservators made sure to come out with a statement saying “this is NOT a professional restoration” which should’ve been hilariously obvious to anyone paying attention but I’m glad they felt the need to speak up.