A lick of paint can do a lot to lift a drab interior, but when it comes to historic sculptures it turns out the job is best left to experts.
That is what a church in Spain discovered after hiring an arts and crafts teacher to freshen up a 16th century wooden sculpture of St George.
Images shared on social media showed the warrior with a transformed pink face and bright coloured armour.
Cultural officials have blasted the botched attempt as “frightening”.
“We cannot tolerate more attacks on our cultural heritage,” Spain’s art conservation association (ACRE) said in a statement. “It shows a frightening lack of training of the kind required for this sort of job.”
The parish priest in the northern town of Estella simply wanted the sculpture to be cleaned and did not intend for it to be restored, the Efe news agency reports.
But the move has enraged local officials who are demanding to know why they were not informed of the church’s plans.
“The council wasn’t told and neither was the regional government of Navarre,” the town’s Mayor Koldo Leoz told The Guardian newspaper.
“They’ve used plaster and the wrong kind of paint and it’s possible that the original layers of paint have been lost. This is an expert job it should have been done by experts,” he said.
The group in charge of the project – Karmacolor – reportedly uploaded a video to Facebook showing every stage of the project but later deleted it.
“What a great loss,” one Facebook user commented underneath a photograph of the sculpture. “Prison sentences would prevent these attacks on our heritage,” another said.
Share your thoughts