Villagers are looking for an amateur artist who ‘renovated’ a greater than 200-year-old shrine in Poland.
Jesus and the Virgin Mary are depicted within the 1820 shrine, which is a registered monument in Studzionka, a small village in southern Poland.
But recent photos of the monument identified that it had been repainted – with the artist even signing their initials, ‘J. Cz’.
Pictures of the shrine went viral when former monument conservator Monika Bogdanowska shared it on Facebook.
The Virgin Mary looks particularly shocked together with her latest paint job – her eyes darting to the side while clasping her hands.
Her skin color appears more like that of Marge Simpson than the Madonna.
‘One other display of “good intentions”. A renovated roadside chapel from the town of Studzionka. It is sufficient to imagine that it was good, sculptural work, unfortunately very tarnished with thick layers of paint.
‘The cross stands in the course of nowhere – there are not any trees, which greatly changes the context of the chapel.
‘The creator of the photos alerted the conservation services concerning the matter, let’s hope that within the near future it should be possible to subject this useful object to skilled conservation since it deserves it.’
An inspection into the damage caused to the shrine is currently underway by local authorities, who said: ‘We are usually not dealing here with a case of vandalism, we’re coping with a case, quite common in smaller, local communities, of a shrine being restored in a completely unacceptable way.
‘Unfortunately, this has led to the devastation of the monument.’
It might have been worse. In 2012, a lady in her eighties attempted to revive a fresco of Jesus Christ in Zaragoza, Spain – however it looked like ‘a hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic’.
The pensioner made an unauthorised attempt to remodel the prized painting after it had deteriorated attributable to moisture.
Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) by Elias Garcia Martinez had been residing within the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza for over 100 years when the lady snuck into ‘restore it’ by herself.
The once dignified portrait soon resembled a toddler’s sketch, a creature from Planet of the Apes or, as one onlooker succinctly put it, ‘a hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic’.
While the fresco was not considered especially useful, it holds high sentimental value for local people.
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