Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayah(812)
Yeah I saw that story a little while ago. It's just odd. Why would she even want to get involved? It's so bad it's like someone did it on purpose! Trying to make a cartoon monkey Jesus or something.
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Because it was messy looking.
A lot of people have no tolerance for the wear and tear that comes from age and heavy use.p
The old lady had exactly the same impulse that leads others to refinish antique furniture with polyurethane, paint old carousel horses, which were originally painted naturalistically, pink or blue or green, and similar things. I have seen a lot of old artwork that was seriously messed up with the best of intentions. When people get over their heads in work like this, there is a reluctance to just quit, so they make a bad job all the worse by trying to fix their first mistakes. She never set out to make Jesus look like an ape, for sure- that would be vandalism, and her intentions were just the opposite from damaging the fresco.
Restoration as a word has different meanings to different people. The fresco technique is one that lies outside most modern folk's knowledge completely, and restoring old frescos is a particularly difficult undertaking. The old lady simply didn't know a thing about how to do it, but she 'fixed' all the flaking problems. Whatever else she did wrong, she sure did a good job of covering all the flaking!
Not everyone is intimidated by problems they don't know how to fix. We all have seen the results of amateur repair attempts gone very wrong. (and that's why I don't try to do plumbing anymore). People appreciate art in different ways, too. For some, art is only decoration of an otherwise empty wall.
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There is even a computer program where one can have one's own face put into the fresco 
